How the Top 3 Priorities of the CISO Minimize Risks and Maximize Cybersecurity

October's Cybersecurity Awareness Month underscores the urgent need for strong cybersecurity measures. With the escalating sophistication of cyberattacks, experienced CISOs provide the C-suite with what’s necessary to safeguard your organization’s digital assets and protect your reputation. Now, more than ever is the time to ensure your business is prepared for evolving threats. This article stems from A CEO’s Guide to Hiring a CISO. The top three priorities of a CISO are to 

• establish a clear cybersecurity strategy, 

• manage risk, and 

• lead incident response efforts.

These priorities ensure cybersecurity measures are preventive and responsive to allow organizations to bounce back faster from any security incidents. 

The Top 3 CISO Priorities 

1. Have a clear strategy for the cybersecurity program and its governance

Implementation: The CISO creates a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy that reflects the overall business aims and risk appetite of the organization. Such a strategy includes defining security policy, procedures, and controls relative to data protection, network security, incident response, and adherence to any applicable regulations. The CISO will institute a governance framework to ensure proper accountability and oversight over the cybersecurity program. Such a framework will cover roles and responsibilities, reporting structures, and performance metrics.

Benefits:  Good governance accompanies a well-defined cybersecurity strategy, which yields several benefits to the organization, including:

• Reduced Risk: A well-planned and proactive strategy reduces the probability of successful cyber-attacks, which also minimizes the impact of security incidents.

• Enhanced Security Posture: A robust cybersecurity strategy reinforces the barriers of the organization against a wide range of threats, making sensitive data and critical systems more secure.

• Improved Compliance:  Aligning the cybersecurity program to relevant regulations and industry standards keeps it compliant and reduces potential legal and financial risks.

• Efficiency: An articulate strategy coupled with a governance framework streamlines security operations, optimizes resource utilization, and avoids duplication of efforts.

Risks if Not Implemented: If this is not implemented, there would be colossal risks that include:

• Vulnerability to Cyberattacks: The fragmented approach may well lead to the organizational inability to put up proper defenses against attacks.

• Insufficient Incident Response: The absence of a well-defined incident response plan leads to delayed and inefficient response mechanisms in case of any security incident. These would amplify the damages and time to recover.

• Lack of Compliance: Failure to comply with relevant laws could result in high fines, judicial legal consequences, and loss of reputation.

• Ineffective Security Expenditure: Without a strategy, security expenditure could be misdirected, resulting in undue costs without commensurate protection.

Implementation: The CISO will implement a continuous risk management process that includes periodic identification and assessment of various cyber threats/vulnerabilities present within the organization's IT infrastructure, applications, and data by developing and implementing appropriate security controls, including technical solutions, security policies, and employee training programs.

• Threat Monitoring: monitor the threat landscape continuously for new threats and vulnerabilities and adjust correspondingly.  

• Incident Response Planning: develop and test incident response plans to act quickly and effectively in the case of a security breach.

Benefits

• Proactive Risk Reduction: A continuous process of risk management ensures the organization actively reduces vulnerabilities to minimize successful attacks.

• Improved Security Awareness: Continuous threat monitoring and regular risk assessments make employees and stakeholders more aware of cybersecurity risks, thus encouraging a security-conscious culture.

• Faster Incident Response: Well-documented incident response plans facilitate a timely and coordinated response in case of an incident, thus helping to reduce the damage and lowering the time to recover.

• Enhanced Resilience: Continuous risk management develops such resilience in an organization that it is better equipped to bear up under cyberattacks and keeps pace with emerging threats while sustaining business operations.

Risks if Not Implemented: Non-implementation of continuous risk management leaves the organization open to some severe risks, which are discussed below.

• Undetected Vulnerabilities: Due to a lack of periodic assessment of risks, some of the most crucial vulnerabilities may remain unidentified, resulting in ease of targeting the organization by any attacker.

• Late threat detection: Poor monitoring of emerging threats delays the response, hence permitting attacks to accumulate and gain momentum. Further damage may be caused due to the delayed response.

• Lack of incident response: Without a good incident response scheme prepared in advance, there could be disarray and inefficiency in responding, thus prolonging the impact of a security breach.

• Reputational Damage: Controls failing to mitigate risks will lead to successful cyber-attacks. These can cause data breaches, service disruptions, and severities in reputation damage.

Implementation: The CISO develops and institutes an incident response work plan in its entirety:

• Incident Response Workflow: CISOs clearly describe the workflow process for detecting, reporting, analyzing, and responding to an information security incident. The workflow shall detail roles and responsibilities, communication channels, and escalation procedures.

• Crisis Recovery Leadership: Identifying and training selected personnel to lead incident response activities in a manner that is coordinated and effective. This may include the designation of an incident response team consisting of representatives from various departments.

• Scenario Planning: Routine tabletop exercises and simulations are conducted to exercise incident response plans against various scenarios of cyber attacks. This helps in finding weaknesses within the plans and ascertains that the team is ready to handle real-world incidents.

Benefits:

• Reduced Impact of the Incident: A structured incident response plan ensures incidents related to security can be contained in the shortest time and thus reduces the resultant damage to data, systems, and reputation.

• Faster Recovery: A structured workflow and predetermined leadership ensure that the aftermath of a security incident will be recovered as quickly and in order as possible, hence reducing disruptions to business.

• Better Preparedness: The more an organization practices scenario planning and tabletop exercises, the better equipped it is to handle various kinds of cyberattacks with skill. This can't help but reduce panic and ensure better decisions when an incident occurs.

• Increased Confidence: The incident response framework provides confidence to all kinds of stakeholders that the organization is committed to cybersecurity and can handle security incidents effectively.

Risks if Not Implemented: Without an incident response plan, every organization will face the following risks:

• Disorganized Incident Response: The absence of a clearly outlined workflow bears the risks of confusion, miscommunication, and late response and, therefore, provides ample room for the incident to escalate. Such a situation can lead to an inefficient recovery as there is no clear leadership and pre-established recovery procedures, thereby making recovery slow, uncoordinated, and error-filled and, as a result, prolonging the undesirable impact of an incident. The inability to respond effectively may aggravate damage from a security incident and result in bigger data loss, system unavailability, financial loss, and reputational loss.

• Loss of Trust: In fact, poor incident response will cause loss of customer, partner, and investor trust and, therefore, the long-term viability of the organization.

These Top 3 CISO priorities are crucial to minimize security risks and maximize cyber protection. Through strategic planning, risk management, and incident response, CISOs will be able to implement a cohesive and robust enterprise-wide cybersecurity posture that ensures complete protection of organizational assets, reputations, and trust with stakeholders. This Cybersecurity Month is the perfect time to move forward with enforcing these CISO priorities to counter the evolving attack surface of the cyber threat landscape and to create a secure and resilient digital world.

Download the full ebook, 'The CEOs Guide to Hire a CISO', by clicking this link.