IBM Security has announced a new risk-based service designed to help organizations apply the same analytics used for traditional business decisions to cybersecurity spending priorities.
IBM’s new Risk Quantification Services creates risk assessments to help clients identify, prioritize and quantify security risk as they weigh decisions such as deploying new technologies, making investments in their business and changing processes.
Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are often not the ones ultimately responsible for their organization’s cybersecurity spending and policy decisions1, so it’s important that they’re equipped with quantitative data to translate cybersecurity challenges into business imperatives for CXOs.
The new IBM service provides CISOs with financial data to help them communicate to the C-suite and Board the potential business impact of security vulnerabilities and liabilities on their business, in order to make more informed business decisions regarding cybersecurity.
Identify, Prioritize, Quantify Security Risks
IBM’s Risk Quantification Services can quantify risk by calculating the probability of a security event occurring, and the probable loss projection based on expected data loss, operational disruptions and business context. Organizations can also benefit from IBM’s risk mitigation recommendations that are based on an analysis of value and impact by comparing their costs and expected risk reduction.
According to a NACD survey, nearly 70% of corporate directors surveyed report that their boards need to strengthen their understanding of the risks and opportunities affecting company performance. IBM Security’s Risk Quantification Services aligns security teams and business leaders with:
• Executive Buy-In – Using a common language to articulate security risks to CXOs, security executives can align business leaders, C-Suite and the Board on the actions necessary to help mitigate security threats to their organization.
• Informed Decision-Making – Security leaders are able to translate risk into dollar amounts to deliver a cost benefit analysis that provides non-security leadership with the possible cost impact of risk, while translating security investments or remediation strategies into a business case and ROI.
• Strategic View of Risk Management – By bringing quantified security analytics to the C-Suite, CXOs are able understand security risks in terms of the probability of a security incident occurring, potential reputational damage, regulatory liability and business disruption.
“Security leaders have often struggled to communicate the value of a security investment to business leaders,” said Julian Meyrick, Vice President, IBM Security. “Our Risk Quantification Services not only enables security leaders to articulate risks and potential exposure in terms of financial loss, it empowers them to measure the actual efficacy of existing security protocols, based on our analysis of their business environment, assets, security architecture and the potential threats to their organization.”