The Culture of Readiness: On Applying a Risk-Based Approach in Cyber Security

A risk-based supervision strategy allows organizations to make informed decisions about effective security investments

When an attack happens, it is too late to implement protective systems in your organization. The benefits of cyber security are not easily quantifiable, though. Executives wonder how well cyber risks are being managed in their companies. But how can you measure the value of hefty security investments?

Let’s think about reducing risks with the right cyber-security solutions. It is prevention, not prosecution, that has proven to be more effective in protecting companies from financial and reputational consequences of an unwanted activity. A risk-based evaluation of security spending is bound to help your company to address a spectrum of more or less common challenges by directing its resources primarily where risks are the highest. Make sure to follow the three stages of this high-level process:

1) Identify a threat & make a potential damage assessment.

In order to identify the weakest links in your company’s environment, where the risk of a breach is the highest, start from an evaluation of networks, devices, applications, and employee behavior. Try to be as open-minded as possible: for example, even though the obligation to use a VPN connection might be enforced in your company, at some point the employees will probably use their personal devices to access confidential information – sometimes also through an unsecured wireless network, whether intentionally or not.

2) Adapt your company’s resources.

The operational reality is, it is not enough to evaluate your company’s IT environment only once, and not monitor device activity afterwards. The key here is constant mitigation. The company’s resources should be put into permanent safety.

At this rate of development, cyber-criminals benefit from organizational hesitance and a lack of structure. There is an ambiguity about the current state of preventive measures, which results in a failure to apply effective solutions. All this can be addressed by finding a good technology partner.

3) Continuously mitigate risks.

Here’s where Comarch can help: for the past 28 years, we’ve helped clients from major international brands to make informed decisions about their cyber risk management. We delivered comprehensive consulting services and innovative IT solutions. We also execute in-depth security audits focused on identifying existing gaps and major risks.

We recommend using the right self-monitoring solution, one that sustains a state of perpetual risk-based supervision and ensures the fastest reaction time. Cyber Threat Protection is exactly that – a powerful tool designed to guard companies against a variety of online threats.

Cyber Threat Protection monitors both user and device activity and creates a unique scoring to decide whether to let someone access the network or not. Is the device safe? Is there any malware? Who is the user? Those are the questions that will be answered within less than a second. An identification of heuristic patterns and a real-time event analysis will help to detect threats and environmental gaps on the go. Taking the procedure a step further, the solution also uses advanced cryptography which allows to conduct constant data integrity checks, therefore ensuring secure communication between users and servers with relevant data.

Recent years have brought some new risks to our work. Our companies became much more mobile, but in the rush to protect our health, they had to adapt quickly and took shortcuts with cyber security. Although the implementation of risk-based approach in cyber security is a complex endeavor, new ways of achieving it bring measurable benefits. A smooth combination of seamlessly evaluating both user and device activities with applying user-friendly authentication methods may just be the most effective means of managing your cyber risks. This is the only way to ensure that a company’s IT environment remains secure.

Julia Poiata, Business Development Manager, Comarch Japan

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