What is a cybersecurity report?
A cybersecurity report presents critical information about cybersecurity threats, risks within a digital ecosystem, gaps in security controls, and the performance of security programs. Cybersecurity reports help to foster data-driven communication between boards, executives, security and risks leaders, and security practitioners to ensure that all parties are working together to enhance security programs and mitigate risk.
Essential elements of a cybersecurity report
The content in a cybersecurity report is determined by the audience. Boards and executives require high level metrics that provide an overview of security performance and flag significant risk exposure. Security and risk leaders require more detailed reports that help to identify the largest areas of risk and prioritize investment and resources. Security practitioners require data that can help to remediate specific issues and identify the optimal course of action to improve cybersecurity posture.
Protecting the organization with cybersecurity reports
As the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks continue to grow, risk-based security reporting has become an indispensable tool for security and risk management professionals. Effective communication between all levels of an organization – from security teams and risk managers to the C-suite and the board – is essential to managing risk, refining security programs, and protecting the organization. A risk-based cybersecurity report enables stakeholders to assess performance based on actual exposure to cyber threats while providing context, highlighting the success of security efforts, and ensuring that resources and investments are aligned with goals.
Bitsight Security Ratings provide concise data and meaningful context for risk-based reporting on security performance and third-party risk. Leveraging the objective, verifiable data provided by Bitsight, organizations can produce cybersecurity reports that allow stakeholders at all levels of an organization to focus on the most significant issues and work together to mitigate risk and defend against threats.
Risk-based cybersecurity report best practices
Risk-based cybersecurity reporting is distinct from compliance-based, incident-based, or comprehensive reporting. Risk-based cyber security reports are the type of communication that is best-suited to reduce an organization’s actual exposure to cyber threats. A risk-based approach to reporting ensures that everyone from the board to practitioners on security teams can stay focused on the most significant issues and the highest priority actions required to reduce exposure to cyber threats.
Risk-based cybersecurity reports are guided by several best practices:
Show risk first
Highest risk items should be front and center in the report to ensure they command the attention that they require.
Assign scores
Assigning a risk score to key findings or recommendations can help non-technical readers to interpret findings and compare priorities.
Provide context
Putting findings in context by comparing metrics to past performance, peers, and competitors helps everyone to focus on aligning resources with the highest priorities for risk mitigation.
Show ramifications
Framing risk in business terms can help executives and leaders understand the implications of findings.
Report often
Reporting on critical items frequently or implementing continuous reporting dashboards ensures that the items most in need of attention and resources will get them.
Delivering the context of a cybersecurity report
When a cybersecurity report delivers findings in context, readers can better understand how the numbers in the report relate to the overall risk landscape for the organization. Context may include everything from a review of past performance to the impact of cyber risk to the bottom line to cybersecurity frameworks within the industry. When receiving data in context, security professionals can make more informed, data-driven decisions about the allocation of resources and prioritization of tasks.
Bitsight reporting capabilities enable risk managers to provide context that includes:
- Past performance. Bitsight can identify how today’s ratings compare to ratings last month or last quarter and whether the ratings are improving or declining over time.
- Risk concentration. Bitsight can reveal how different business units and subsidiaries across organizations are performing.
- Industry benchmarks. Bitsight reports show how security performance compares to peers and competitors.
- Financial quantification. Risk managers can identify the financial impact of an organization’s current risk posture.
- Cybersecurity frameworks. Reports can also reveal how findings align with important frameworks in the cybersecurity industry.
Bitsight for Security Performance Management
Bitsight transforms how companies manage cyber risk. Bitsight Security Ratings offer a data-driven, dynamic measurement of an organization’s cybersecurity performance. As a form of continuous cyber security monitoring, Bitsight ratings provide immediate insight into an organization’s security performance and into the security posture of vendors. Bitsight ratings also are proven to correlate to the risk of a data breach. Research has shown that companies with a Bitsight Security Rating of 500 or lower are nearly 5 times more likely to have a breach those with a rating of 700 or above1.
Bitsight enables risk managers to produce more effective cyber risk reports. Bitsight’s reporting capabilities allow cybersecurity teams to adhere to all the best practices for risk-based reporting.
- Overview and executive reporting options are designed to satisfy the requests and answer the questions of company stakeholders. Risk managers can summarize risk across the vendor portfolio, laying the groundwork for data-driven conversations at the board and executive level about managing risk.
- Comparison reports allow organizations to take a detailed look at how all aspects of their cybersecurity programs stack up against other companies, including competitors, partners, and vendors. Reports on security benchmarks help organizations better understand how their vulnerabilities and vendor risk requirements compare to the companies they’re competing against.
- History and trend reports provide context for interpreting today’s security ratings. Analyzing historical data can help prepare security teams to react quicker to future threats. Analyzing trends can highlight past vulnerabilities and risky areas that might require continuous monitoring.
Why choose Bitsight for cybersecurity reporting?
A security ratings leader
Bitsight is the most widely adopted security rating solution in the world. Bitsight is the choice of all of the Big 4 accounting firms, 4 of the top 5 investment banks, 20% of the world’s governments, and 25% of Fortune 500 companies.
Greater visibility
Bitsight offers extensive visibility into key areas of cyber risk that are correlated to breach. Bitsight offers insight into 23 risk factors – twice as many as any other security ratings organization – including compromised systems, security diligence, user behavior, and data breaches.
An engaged community
The Bitsight platform has the most robust community of cyber risk professionals. 2,100 Bitsight customers share security ratings with more than 170,000 third-party organizations, providing the necessary context for customers to gain confidence in their interaction with third-party vendors.
Clear prioritization and context
Bitsight incorporates only the highest quality and most critical risk factors into its security ratings and calculates importance in a highly diversified way to ensure the most critical assets are ranked higher.