The growth of technology and innovative computing measures such as cloud computing, the Internet of things, robotic process automation, quantum computing, and prediction analytics integrated into organizations makes them increasingly susceptible to cyber threats. Research has pointed out that there is a 25% chance of organizations being breached and 10% of them facing serious financial losses. It also revealed that more than 60 % of small companies will be out of business due to the increasing cyber-attacks. This means businesses are to prioritise the governance and assessment of cyber risks to sustain themselves as successful business performers.
The research also showed that the evolving cyber risks are not easy to understand and that organizations seem to underestimate often the financial loss related to cyber threats that include:
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- Immediate loss: Business being interrupted by decreased production, delays in product launches, and additional costs to recover from attacks.
- Long-term consequences: Damage caused to the company’s competitiveness, reputation, revenue, intellectual property theft and unauthorized use of intellectual property.
- Legal risk: Neglecting cyber risks, breach reporting, safeguarding sensitive information and critical infrastructure protection will cause financial loss.
There are four areas that companies need to address to prevent the rise in cyber threats from crippling the growth of the organization. To avoid this trap, companies need to focus on the long-term effectiveness of their strategic decisions in four areas:
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- Align cyber risk management with business needs
Every corporate has many challenges and limited funding to meet them. Keeping this in mind, businesses need to invest only where ever essential. Clear insights into business operations and finances, such as generating languages to discuss cyber risk, bringing in awareness to the investors and board members. Cyber risk is to be made a prioritized agenda to focus on comparing the predicted risks and the cyber-attacks that competitive corporates have faced in the past. This will help draw a clear cyber risk prevention strategy that can help the organizations concentrate on what matters the most in securing their businesses.
- Continuously monitor the cyber risk capability performance.
Continuously monitoring the cyber risks daily is essential to protect the business from falling prey to ransomware attacks or any other cyber-attacks that can cause major damage to the organization. By having a check over the currently evolving cyber-attacks, an organization can be prepared for future outcomes to take strategic decisions. This requires a simulation-aided approach to strengthen the organisation’s capability and be prepared for a fight when the need arises.
- Proactively anticipate threats following the changing threat landscape.
Digital transformation paves the way to a faster, stronger, more sophisticated attack. It is crucial to anticipate and be prepared to prevent any devastating attack. Proactive cyber risk management enables organizations to defend themselves better from cyber-attacks. This contributes to improving the security capability, thereby reducing the number of significant security incidents. Reactive learning is a costlier form of learning that involves observations made from cybersecurity incidents that the organizations previously have suffered.
- Position security to be practised to enable strategic business
With the ongoing increase in the cybersecurity challenges organizations face, additional measures are to be taken to ensure cybersecurity and significantly improve the defensive posture of cyber risk management. Organizations that cannot properly make these adjustments become increasingly exposed to unintended control lapses and reactive learning mechanisms. The SEC’s new cybersecurity rules provide a solid basis for transparency about the company’s cyber-risk governance.
Conclusion
With these four major areas of cyber risk covered, companies can anticipate and fortify themselves for the cyber-attacks that can cause devastating damage to their data, reputation, and finance. Organizations must monitor these areas to ensure a robust cybersecurity system is functional to prevent cyber threats.
