It’s no surprise to anyone that the cybersecurity landscape continues to be rocky. The average cost of a data breach worldwide is $4.35 million, and the EU Agency for Cybersecurity says that more than 10 terabytes of data are stolen every month. In fact, ransomware-as-a-service has grown into a full-fledged industry. Every stakeholder from Boards to finance teams are asking cybersecurity leaders, “How strong is our cybersecurity program?”
It’s an important question, with a very layered response. To answer that question, cybersecurity leaders need to:
Establish metric-driven standards
- Drive accountability across the extended organization
- Understand priorities for investment
- Remediate gaps and achieve the standards your company set
- Confidently communicate cybersecurity performance to key stakeholders
If all that feels overwhelming, you aren’t alone. But, there are strategies and methods you can implement to make the best cybersecurity decisions quickly and confidently. It starts with understanding the data and risk factors that are most important to you and how to gain insights from that data.
Build Your Cybersecurity Strategy on a Foundation of Data
With all that’s at stake for an organization in today’s cybersecurity environment, security leaders need to make the right decisions about investments, remediation, and strategy. Not only that, but they need to stay a step ahead of attackers. But if you’re relying on disjointed processes that don’t take into account all the data across your digital footprint (or untrustworthy data in general), you aren’t getting the meaningful insights you need to make decisions. You’re too busy responding to what attackers are doing instead of building resiliency into your programs.
It all starts with having the right data. From high-quality datasets, you can glean mission-critical insights you can take action on, including addressing current risk problems and planning for the future. With the right data, security leaders become better defenders, move their strategy from good to great, and get automated and continuous visibility into where cybersecurity falls short.
In short: the right cybersecurity strategy needs the right data to be successful. By running all your risk processes in one trusted place that incorporates data across your enterprise (and taking into account the data from meaningful peers), you ensure continuity, collaboration, and communication. In this way, you more easily and rapidly build strong security performance.