Companies face a wide variety of cyber threats, and cybersecurity risk management is the process of identifying, prioritizing, and remediating these threats based on the risk that they pose to the business. By implementing an effective enterprise risk management program, an organization ensures that it addresses the most critical threats to the business first.
Organizations face more cybersecurity threats than they can manage, a problem that is exacerbated by expanding IT environments and the evolution of the cyber threat landscape. As a result, businesses need to choose where to spend their limited resources to manage cybersecurity risk.
Cyber risk management enables organizations to make these decisions in a structured, data-driven fashion. Instead of a first-come-first-served approach, the organization identifies the threats that pose the greatest risk and focus its efforts there. By prioritizing threats based on risk, an organization ensures that it doesn’t waste its resources on minor threats and maximizes the impact of its security investment.
The cybersecurity risk management process can be broken up into the following four stages:
To help organizations to manage their cybersecurity risk, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published a Cyber Risk Management Framework (RMF). This document is also known as NIST 800-53. The primary focus of the NIST RMF is to ensure that US federal contractors have strong cybersecurity, and compliance with the framework is mandatory for them.
However, even if compliance is not required, the framework provides useful guidance for implementing a cybersecurity risk management program. For example, the RMF defines an expanded, seven-step process for cyber risk management and provides guidance for implementing each step.
Cybersecurity risk management can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a corporate cybersecurity program. Some of the benefits that cyber risk management can provide to the business include the following:
Cyber risk management can enhance an organization’s security program by focusing its efforts and resources on the biggest threats to the business. By identifying and prioritizing threats based on risk, cyber risk management can help an organization to reduce its exposure to cyberattacks and improve the ROI of cybersecurity investment.
Check Point offers security consulting services to help organizations to implement a cybersecurity risk management policy. This includes no-cost cybersecurity risk assessments to help an organization identify and prioritize cybersecurity risks in its environment.
Check Point’s Infinity Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) enables companies to manage cyber risks at scale by providing access to the full range of Check Point security solutions under a single corporate license. To learn more, sign up for an Infinity ELA consultation.