Edition 8: How To Optimize Your Cyber Risk Prioritization Process

As many enterprises move forward to reduce their enterprise risk state, it becomes imperative to identify critical areas that impact the security landscape. This task is carried out continuously and sometimes can lead to a lapse in risk visibility or unneeded implementation practices of a risk management program. In the context of threats, exploits seemingly expand through software applications and disrupt risk management programs. Additionally, systems continually change and can become gateways for hackers' exploitation. So, how can an organization identify its threat posture, reduce risks, and identify primary attack vectors? Many will use a common approach to identify and remediate risk, but based on the nature of exploits and attacks, organizations must understand their true risk indicators.

Risk management has various interfaces or inputs that affect its outcome. These inputs are derived through management practices or operational commitments. For instance, a vulnerability assessment may indicate all Windows 2008 servers are the most critical. This would be an in-scope indication, but the out-of-scope indication onboards end of lifecycle systems, budgetary concerns, leadership goals, or system changes. Each produces varying input and business drivers that may affect how risk reduction occurs or inputs to the risk management lifecycle. The outcome reshapes risk prioritization through optimization strategies that will ultimately identify enterprise risks that best fit.

The term best-fit risks define the most actionable and valuable risk indicators. Every enterprise has different inputs, from threat vectors to operational practices and leadership goals. The outcome heavily relies upon how optimized risk evaluation occurs. It can become very labor-intensive to evaluate risk from 50 inputs, but what if we could identify 10 inputs that derive the same results? This would completely optimize our risk prioritization cycle.

Fiscal optimization (Budget) is a straightforward ranking of risks from most impactful to least. Risk managers would tally the total risk response costs until funding is exhausted. ?

Algorithmic optimization (ROI) – the application of mathematical formulae to calculate the aggregate cost benefit to the enterprise, given the estimated costs, in a purely mechanical approach. ?

Operational optimization ( Leadership Goals)– selection of those risks from the register that are most valuable based upon leadership preferences, mission objectives, stakeholder sentiment (e.g., those of customers, citizens, or shareholders), and other subjective criteria. Another optimization factor is operational and based on an iterative communications cycle of risk reporting and analytics.

Forced ranking optimization (Risk Scoring) - prioritizing risks to best use available resources for the maximum benefit given specific negative and positive consequences. Various business drivers and risk consequences have differing weights for developing a score, helping to move beyond the simplistic "threat multiplied by vulnerability" approach to build business objectives into that equation. Because these factors and their weights are based on business drivers, senior stakeholders should define the elements for all enterprise levels, subject to adjustment and refinement.

Through my experience, I have seen a combination of many risk prioritization initiatives. ROI and operational commitments seem to have the most impact when doing many vulnerability remediation tasks. Each month a vulnerability scan would produce risk indicators, but leadership had their own opinion! This is not to say they were terrible decision-makers – but the operational commitment was important. How can I protect this enterprise? This is the mindset that should always surface. The working practices stemmed from knowing how risk impact operated. I have used weighed scoring to calculate many vulnerability programs. The image below provides a snapshot of how a weighted scoring method works.

For more information concerning Cyber Risk and topics concerning cybersecurity purchase, a copy of the “Cybersecurity Mindset” at?www.dewaynehart.com; and please subscribe to my YouTube Channel at:?https://www.youtube.com/@chiefofcybersecurity

Please reference NISTIR 8286B: Prioritizing Cybersecurity Risk for Enterprise Risk Management for in-depth information on Risk Optimization

For more information concerning cybersecurity, purchase a copy of “The Cybersecurity Mindset” at?www.dewaynehart.com; and please subscribe to my YouTube Channel at:?https://www.youtube.com/@chiefofcybersecurity

Press Release: https://www.einpresswire.com/sources/u462154

Author: https://www.dewaynehart.com/

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Dewayne Hart

"We Are Only Safe As Our Mindset"

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