CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE:
IBM) Security today 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."
IBM Security will be applying the FAIR methodology, an open
international standard for cyber risk modeling, and is
collaborating with RiskLens and its proven quantitative cyber risk
management platform to assess in financial terms the potential
impact of security risks. IBM Security is establishing the
necessary business context for its risk calculation models using
the breadth and depth of its security portfolio and consulting
services, including its expertise and insights gleaned from
responding to security incidents around the globe and unparalleled
visibility from IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence as well as IBM's
mature understanding of client landscapes.
Applying its deep awareness of client business processes, IBM is
developing use cases into risk calculation models to define a
business's assets, security threats and the potential effect of a
subsequent security incident. Some of the use cases include:
- Mapping a Secure Journey to Cloud – Companies have
gradually been moving to the cloud for years, with a recent report
by Flexera revealing that 59% of businesses surveyed plan on
increasing their spending on cloud services amid the pandemic. A
risk quantification assessment could help organizations distinguish
which workloads to move to the cloud and how, while also
recommending proper security controls to put in place based on a
cost-benefit impact analysis.
- Calculating Exposure in Mergers & Acquisitions – As
global M&A volumes are projected to amount to $2.1 trillion in 2020, it's important that
organizations venturing into M&A transactions incorporate cyber
risk assessment into their due diligence process to verify the
valuation of a deal. A recent IBM
Institute for Business Value study found that of surveyed
businesses that had recently executed a major M&A transaction,
57% performed a cybersecurity assessment only after due diligence
was complete. In fact, one in three responding companies
experienced a breach that can be directly attributed to M&A
activity during integration. Quantifying this potential exposure
not only helps organizations proactively mitigate security risks
before they turn into active threats, it enables them to assess the
issues that might impact the target company's value.
- Enabling a Zero Trust Remote Work Model – A recent
study conducted by Morning Consult and sponsored by IBM found that
61% of surveyed employees new to working from home that are using
their personal computers stated they haven't been provided with
tools to properly secure the devices. Now protecting wider, more
diverse environments, organizations should proactively operate
under the assumption of potential compromise, taking a zero trust
approach to security. By defining what poses risk to their business
and quantifying the impact, from third-party tools or applications
to access controls, organizations are able to understand which
risks they need to prioritize mitigating. In other words, assessing
security risks, contextualizing them and calculating their business
impact can help enable organizations to enforce their zero trust
model and strengthen their cybersecurity resiliency as work models
adapt to an evolving business landscape.
IBM's Institute for Business Value (IBV) also released a report
on Assessing Cyber Risk in M&A. To download the report, visit:
http://ibm.co/cyber-risk-mergers-acquisitions
For more information about IBM Security's Risk Quantification
Services, visit:
https://www.ibm.com/security/services/security-governance/risk-management
About IBM Security
IBM Security offers one of the most advanced and integrated
portfolios of enterprise security products and services. The
portfolio, supported by world-renowned IBM X-Force® research,
enables organizations to effectively manage risk and defend against
emerging threats. IBM operates one of the world's broadest
security research, development and delivery organizations,
monitors 70 billion security events per day in more than 130
countries, and has been granted more than 10,000 security patents
worldwide. For more information, please check www.ibm.com/security,
follow @IBMSecurity on Twitter or visit the IBM Security
Intelligence blog.
Press Contact
IBM Security Media Relations
Georgia Prassinos
gprassinos@ibm.com
1 According to the 2020 Cost of a Data Breach
report, sponsored by IBM Security and conducted by the Ponemon
Institute, only 27% of respondents stated that the CISO/ CSO was
ultimately responsible for their organization's cybersecurity
technology and policy decision-making.
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SOURCE IBM