How Failing to Prioritize Cyber Security can Hurt Your Company

Cyber security prioritization is an important aspect. Know why?

Businesses around the world depend on technology to function and thrive. However, along with this growth, the risk of being hacked is increasing. To avoid the potentially crippling consequences of these cyber attacks, CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers) need to be aware of cyber attacks, which could come in the form of breaches of data, malware attacks, cyber espionage, and online phishing, or other threats. In addition, CISOs should prioritize their cyber risks so that the organization can take steps to mitigate those risks and mitigate potential harm as effectively as possible. This article explores several strategies for identifying and prioritizing cyber risks affecting your organization.

What Is Cyber Risk?

Cyber risk refers to the opportunity of operational disruptions, economic losses, or reputational harm which could result from the failure of IT systems, devices, or applications. Cyber attacks are one of the tremendous cyber risks for corporations everywhere. All sorts of corporations face cyber-attacks.

Why is it important to prioritize cyber risks?

 Cyber ​​risk can materialize in a number of ways that affect the entire enterprise, not just the IT department. For example, a specific cyber security threat could result in:

• Security breach to access IT systems
• Ransomware attack to lock down business systems for ransom
• Stealing data as part of a corporate espionage scheme
• Loss of intellectual property can hurt an organization's reputation, increase customer revenue, or cause regulatory and legal problems

 In short, cyber risks represent potential disruptions and costs to your business. To avoid them, you need to understand the risks you face. You should also prioritize cyber risks and implement appropriate prevention, detection, and remediation efforts to stop cyber threats with minimal business impact.

Identify threats to your business

 One of the problems with cyber threats and risks is that these threats can be lurking anywhere. To reduce cyber security risks and the possibility of cyber-attacks, first, determine where those risks are coming from. Knowledge can help you design appropriate incident response strategies.

 It is therefore useful to "classify" cyber threats and risks by key IT functions:

• Hardware risks
• Supplier or third-party risks
• Data risk

As 90% of businesses, your organization can use open-source software libraries and development kits to save time and speed up development cycles. Despite those advantages, open-source software tends to contain vulnerabilities in its code that bad actors can exploit.

 In 2020, 84 percent of open-source codebases contained one or more vulnerabilities, up from 75 percent in 2019. Moreover, in late 2020, there was a 430 percent increase in attacks to infiltrate open-source software supply chains. So, if your organization relies on open-source software, this is one risk you should prioritize for assessment and remediation.

 The DevOps approach to software development also increases security risks. Although DevOps can improve time to market and the quality of the final product, it can also result in new vulnerabilities that may not be caught in time, opening doors to cyber-attacks and security breaches. Security monitoring must be built into DevOps pipelines from the start.

 Hardware Risks

 Like software, hardware can also create cyber risks for your firm. In one 2019 survey, Dell reported that 63 percent of organizations had experienced at least one data breach in the previous year due to a hardware security vulnerability. These may stem from:

• Flawed processors
• Faulty hardware design
• Hardware Trojans installed via microchips or other hard to find hardware devices
• Legacy systems lacking updated security patches
• The complex supply chains of hardware manufacturing also create cyber risks, especially when third-party vendors get involved and create security holes.

 You also need to be more alert to threats against industrial control systems (ICS) and operational technology (OT), as attacks on these systems have more than tripled in 2020.

 Raise awareness of attacks against corporate hardware and networks, such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, malware attacks, and attacks on IoT devices. Ultimately, it's essential to protect your network, systems, and users against hackers, phishing schemes, and social engineering attacks.

 Third-Party Risks

One study found that in 2020, 51 percent of businesses suffered a data breach caused by a third party. Further, 74 percent of companies admitted that these breaches resulted from giving too much "privileged access" to third parties.

Modern organizations all over the world have complex and highly-interconnected supply chains, consisting of multiple third parties such as:

• Vendors
• Outsourcing firms
• Suppliers
• Contractors, temporary workers, freelancers
• Consultants
• Brokers, dealers, agents
• Intermediaries

Any of these parties may have access to your enterprise assets and customers' personal data. A failure to secure this access, monitor it regularly, and maintain appropriate access control can increase the risk of cyber-attacks and data breaches, resulting in the exposure of sensitive information, legal battles, financial losses, and reputational damage.

You need a robust third-party risk management process to protect your organization from accidental or malicious harm.

Additionally, your organization is also at risk of third-party supply chain attacks if you use third-party software. In such attacks, threat actors slip malicious code into a trusted piece of software, allowing them to scale up the attack quickly. Such attacks may lead to a data leak, malware injection, or unauthorized access to enterprise assets.

Data Risks

The average cost of a data breach rose from $3.86 million in 2020 to $4.24 million in 2021. The number of breaches also increased in 2021. By October 2021, the total number of breaches had already exceeded the total for 2020.

Data breaches can stem from internal sources, such as careless employees, or from external sources, such as cybercriminals that deploy phishing scams to steal data.

Security teams must strengthen enterprise access and security controls to minimize such risks. End-to-end encryption, zero-trust security strategies, granular data audits, regular data backups, and cyber hygiene training for employees and vendors are examples of ways to minimize data risks.