Measuring security and value at risk: The role of the risk operations center

According to the World Economic Forum, 45% of cyber leaders are concerned about disruption to their companies’ operations, while 71% of small businesses felt they could not adequately secure their operations.

Why is this the case? Most organizations are still playing “risk whack-a-mole” – a never-ending game you can’t win. With so much information available – from core infrastructure, vulnerability management, web applications, cloud, and now AI systems – many organizations are finding it hard to get an accurate enterprise-wide overview of their business risk. Without this, knowing what to prioritize is harder still.

Understanding risk in context

Do you know which assets are the most essential to your business, how much risk you’re exposed to, what your business is willing to accept, and what’s an acceptable threshold? Once you understand this, you can calculate the potential monetary impact and likelihood any issue could be exploited.

Calculating Value at Risk is a cyber risk quantification exercise that describes how much the business stands to lose from an IT security issue. Framing these potential incidents in terms of business impact – specifically in terms of dollars and cents – simplifies the decision process around how to prioritize risk reduction actions through mitigations or patching, or transferring the risk with cyber insurance.

Building a Risk Operations Center (ROC)

While the concept is simple, so many companies still struggle practically with cyber risk quantification. This is where a Risk Operations Center (ROC) comes in. The ROC acts as the central nervous system for an organization’s risk management program, enabling proactive security measures and improved decision-making. It provides a single point of control where data from asset inventories across the enterprise, alerts, and third-party sources can be analyzed using a combination of threat intelligence and business context. Based on this, you get a simple, real-time view of the risks that your organization faces, how likely those risks are to turn into breaches, and the costs they represent. This data simplifies risk triage and makes it more understandable for the business leadership team.

A ROC helps you measure, communicate, and eliminate your cyber risk more effectively:

• Measure: Understand where your crown jewel assets lie, what your risk exposure is, and what you stand to lose should an attack happen
• Communicate: Explain cyber risk to your C-suite and board in the language of business – dollars and cents
• Eliminate: Prioritize actions to reduce risk through patching, mitigations, or transferring that risk to cyber insurers

Using a ROC approach around Value at Risk involves collaborating with your finance and compliance peers to understand and align on the impact that those risks represent, so you can explain them effectively to your board. And it makes clear what steps you can take to reduce those risks, as well as any investment is needed. By focusing on monetary impact, you can speak the language of business around cyber risk and reduce potential disruption to your operations.

Find out how Qualys can help mitigate risk in your organization by clicking here.