The Risk-Based Approach to Cyber Security

According to the management consultants at McKinsey, “The most sophisticated institutions are moving from a “maturity based” to a “risk based” approach for managing cyber risk.”

The world of cyber security has outgrown the maturity-based approach, which is both slow and costly, and doesn’t address the question as to where the specific risks of any one particular organization lie. This is why McKinsey presents the need for change in their article “The Risk-based Approach to Cyber Security” in which they outline the many shortcomings of relying solely on a maturity-based security strategy, and propose the move to a risk-based management framework.

Thinking Smarter, Not Faster

Your cyber security tools might well be excellent, including firewalls, best-practices, and segmentation. But if you don’t fully understand which threats are a danger to your specific network and your specific facilities, it’s impossible to assess the usefulness of your current security, or to assign the budget for upgrades and improvements.

The key to change is not simply to find a better way to monitor every single item which passes through the network, but rather to approach the issue of cyber security from a totally new perspective.

[inject id=’code-47fd23f73a9caecab1e206306adae7f9′]

McKinsey confirms that this innovation is the basis for risk based cybersecurity solutions, which identify the individual risks themselves, cutting down the workload enormously. But more importantly, by working according to the criteria of each client, cybersecurity providers are able to assign a level of priority to each risk-factor, thereby enabling the organization to choose where the security budget is best spent. First, risks are assessed in the short-term to prevent any immediate problems, and then on an ongoing basis, so that the network security can be maintained at the optimum level for the cheapest cost. Creating a return-on-investment based system for cyber security makes business sense, and ensures that companies remain online and protected as far as possible.

The Risk-Based Road-Map: What is Involved in The Change

Moving from a maturity-based system to a risk-based approach involves several steps, which your cybersecurity provider should be able to support you through.

• Identifying and defining value: A risk-based approach will be tailored to the needs and parameters of the individual enterprise, therefore the first step is to define the source of value of the enterprise. At the top of the list is the “crown jewels” consisting of critical assets or systems.Each element should have a priority level assigned, and a list of vulnerabilities to which it is susceptible.
• Mapping the enterprise-risk ecosystem: This involves creating a virtual model of the organization’s network, and applying the relevant risk-factors, in order to obtain a clear and complete picture of the risk landscape and insight into the strategies for mitigating problems.
• Understanding the relationship between the pertinent risks and the risk appetite of the organisation: A ROI-based approach doesn’t only take the security risks into consideration, but also the needs and budgetary constraints of the company, so that a clear strategy can be developed.
• Providing solutions: Once there is clarity as to the security measures that are needed and the prioritization of those measures, it is essential to implement solutions efficiently and effectively.
• Ongoing monitoring: An efficient cyber security risk management platform must be able to provide continuous mapping and monitoring to ensure the long-term health of the organization.

Radiflow’s Risk-Based Solutions

The need for a change from maturity-based to risk-based cyber security is not news to Radiflow. Our cutting edge risk assessment and management platform has been designed especially for the needs of OT cybersecurity, and given the critical nature of OT systems, Radiflow understands the importance of moving away from “guesstimating” to a data-driven system.

Radiflow’s CIARA risk assessment & management platform is a ROI-based fully automated system designed to provide a risk-mitigation roadmap based on the specific needs of the company or organisation. The latest innovation to the CIARA platform is the possibility to view the digital image of multiple facilities on a single UI, with the ability to perform a breach attack simulation (BAS) on the entire network, pinpointing the specific risks from each site.

To discover how the cyber security transformation could improve the effectiveness of your security budget, contact our team today to schedule a demo.