The Board Reporting Challenge
Reporting the state of security at a board meeting can lead to confusion. The presented data is often accompanied by technical jargon that does not interest and is not easily understood by business leaders. Metrics and data graphs that succinctly cut straight to the bone and aggregate important and relevant risk information help boards make better-informed decisions in balancing cybersecurity efforts with business continuity operations.
This blog will give some insight into what the board is looking for and offer guidance in selecting KPIs and cybersecurity metrics. A CISO is usually tasked with conveying cyber risk to the board of directors and to succeed, they will need to translate and process a lot of information to get to the bottom line of how cybersecurity directly impacts the business.
Increased Pressure from the C-Suite
With breaches and attacks in the headlines every day, cybersecurity has moved to the board’s agenda. The modern CISO must be able to illustrate how cybersecurity impacts their business directly—and one of the most effective ways to accomplish that is through data metrics.
As security and risk management moves away from dedicated security teams and rises in rank towards the upper echelons of corporate governance, there is increased scrutiny from senior executives and board members on what the return of investment on years of heavy spending on cybersecurity has been. Now more than ever, security and risk professionals need to effectively measure, manage, and communicate their security programs to senior executives.
Compliance Metrics are not Enough
According to a Forrester report, companies can no longer simply share the results of a successful audit to prove they have good security performance. CISOs understand that while their compliance agendas are important boxes to check, a strong security posture is what matters.
In the absence of hardcore risk metrics, most cyber security risk dashboards put an unnecessary focus on building graphs and scorecards that look mostly at compliance controls and often use a simplistic traffic-light color scheme.
But security leaders need to do more than that. CISOs need to capture, track, and report on security metrics that truly measure security outcomes, built on meaningful measurements that all stakeholders can understand. CISOs can convert compliance investments from an overhead cost into a business enabler with the ability to measure and communicate progress toward compliance achievements.
Objectives of Information Security Metrics
- Effectively communicate risk posture
- Demonstrate the value of a security investment
- Drive performance improvement
- Help prioritize decision-making
- Manage risk and compliance
- Provide quantitative measurements to risk scenarios
- Demonstrate periodic progress against cyber risk management goals and the practices such as cyber training, investments in technology, etc., contributing to these advancements
- Set high-level targets or drill down to specific controls, then measure progress by combining real-time and historical data.
- Ensure cybersecurity investments are continuously improving with deep insights into current and historical performance
- Identify the total cost of your risk while discovering potential savings from further investments in cybersecurity and compliance
Which KPIs to Include in Your Report?
Deciding what KPIs to include in your cyber security KPI dashboard is another challenge for CISOs. IT professionals often track many security KPIs regularly, but most of them will not be of interest to the Board.
As Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of Crowdstrike put it, “the responsibility of the board is not to be involved operationally and tell the CISO which firewall to buy and which technology to deploy, but it is their responsibility to hold them accountable and make sure they have the resources needed.”
The truth of the matter is that very few security teams are trained in risk measurement principles and methods. They may be extremely well-versed in all aspects of the cyber risk landscape, but don’t have the qualifications to measure cyber risk, whether qualitatively or quantitatively.
Risk measurement and scoring is a detailed process that involves scoping risk scenarios and then collecting evidence regarding threats, asset value characteristics, and controls. This information is then applied to a 3D or 4D model to generate a clear understanding of risk.
Most prepackaged solutions that offer risk metrics are irrelevant to the bottom-line risk outcomes that CEOs are looking for. The result is wasted resources spent on expensive risk management solutions that don’t deliver on their investment objectives.
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Centraleyes for Free
See for yourself how the Centraleyes platform exceeds anything an old GRC
system does and eliminates the need for manual processes and spreadsheets
to give you immediate value and run a full risk assessment in less than 30 days
What Information Should a Security Risk Dashboard Display to the Board?
Centraleyes has revolutionized the world of cyber risk reporting by providing a comprehensive, integrated platform designed to simply help you achieve better strategic decision-making. Cyber risk teams can automate over 50% of their collection and analysis work through the platform, while automatically generating compelling, visual, and easy-to-understand reports.
Present only the most important and relevant facts when creating a cyber security risk dashboard for the board of directors to reduce confusion and encourage data-driven decisions that address the major threats the firm faces.
- Security ratings and risk scores are considered excellent metrics for board-level meetings because they are risk-focused, objective, and outcome-based.
- Another effective cybersecurity dashboard display is the status of initiatives or projects that have been put in place to manage risk and vulnerabilities.
- Internal risk and security posture is the simplest risk to communicate. In today’s hyper-connected world, though, third-party and even fourth-party risks should be communicated to the board. Centraleyes can help you gain visibility into these environments.
The general goal is to choose metrics that the board can easily understand and apply to data-driven decision-making.
Which Metrics Have Meaning for the Board of Directors?
Centraleyes takes a proactive approach to expose risk and ensure compliance by using powerful, intuitive metrics to explore all of your business’s financial data.
Financially Quantified Risk Scores
Centraleyes’ Board View feature calculates risk level using an additive type of formula that outputs an overall risk score based on:
- The status of the 5 NIST functions: identify, detect, protect, respond, recover
- Corporate assets
- Risk appetite, with the option to compare risk scores based on selected tier level
- Your risk score as compared to the cyber insurance policy coverage
These factors are all interactive, and board members can go deeper into the metrics to see what components factor into the final output.
Third-party Risk Scores
Third-party risk scores should factor into your organization’s overall risk score. Using advanced vulnerability scans of vendor domains and prepopulated questionnaires, you can gain insight into each vendor’s risk posture on an individual basis, and identify areas that need security fortification in your supply chain.
Quarterly Comparisons and Future Predictions
Detailed comprehensive reports should be prepared quarterly to capture the statistics, analysis, and impact of the various systems risks. From these analyses, the team presents a variety of visual diagrams representing the risk metrics and measures at different levels to the management.
Centraleyes built an interactive 4D matrix that calculates impact, probability vs. cost, and time resources. Each element can be broken down to see how results were driven, and how to achieve risk target goals.
In addition to risk based on likelihood and impact, companies must also assess their ability to respond to risks that will emerge in the future. Gaps must be identified and filled as needed to ensure an effective response in the face of unpredictable events.
Budget Allocation and Status of Security Investments
Ensure cybersecurity investments are continuously improving by gaining deep visibility into current and historical performance. Convert compliance investments from an overhead cost to a business enabler with the ability to measure your progress toward operational resilience.
Conclusion
Successful governance of risk management requires full visibility and understanding of business-level risk to make data-driven decisions. Enable productive conversations between security teams and the Board by translating complex technical risk into intuitive visual reports that highlight your company’s business risk exposure through empirical trends, financial quantification, and business assets. When boards get their hands and eyes on solid data metrics, they can make an informed decision to mitigate risk across the enterprise.
Start Getting Value With
Centraleyes for Free
See for yourself how the Centraleyes platform exceeds anything an old GRC
system does and eliminates the need for manual processes and spreadsheets
to give you immediate value and run a full risk assessment in less than 30 days
