Quantifying Cyber Risk

 

We have all had to assess our personal finances to be more diligent about where and how we spend in order to survive the lasting impact of 2020. That’s no different when it comes to cybersecurity. In 2021, we can only assume that organizations will pull the purse strings a little tighter without solid justification for an expense. Forrester analysts predict “audit findings and budget pressure will lead to an uptick in the demand for risk quantification technology.”*

Especially in light of recent major breaches, cyber security has been deemed an essential function. But, how exactly do organizations even quantify risk? And better, yet, how do you explain that to upper management? How does a CISO justify spending more on cybersecurity without sounding like Chicken Little proclaiming each vulnerability could lead to imminent disaster?

Risk quantification solutions provide insights into the criticality of assets, business context and potential impact of an issue in real time. This enables security leaders determine where, what, and how technology is putting the business at risk.

Increasing Cyber Resilience

As organizations begin to integrate cyber risk data into their overall business strategy, CISOs must be prepared to answer questions like:

• Are you protecting your systems?
• Are you protecting your sensitive information?
• How do you get the most risk reduction for the investment?

Without a purpose-built, risk-focused strategy in place, security teams will lack focus about the best way to reduce risk and enable the business. By prioritizing the risks that are already being actively being exploited and focusing on areas with the highest level of exposure, security teams will have the ability to stay ahead of the curve.

 

Why NorthStar?

 

NorthStar provides security and risk management leaders with the most accurate and comprehensive answers to those important questions. Here’s how:

 

Are you protecting your systems?

• Vulnerability and exploit prediction intelligence work together to reduce the set of vulnerabilities requiring remediation by 98%
• Data and rule engines work together to provide an automated capability to quickly and explicitly characterize the business importance of each asset
• Together, the capabilities above allow NorthStar to rank the criticality of assets by quantifying the risk posed by vulnerabilities in the environment and their potential impact to the business
• NorthStar provides a list of remediation actions in ranked order from the greatest reduction of risk for environment to the least, allowing the most efficient remediation of vulnerabilities in an environment

 

Are you protecting your sensitive information?

• Data and rule engines work together to provide an automated capability to quickly and explicitly characterize the business importance of each asset
• Together, the capabilities above allow NorthStar to rank the criticality of assets by quantifying the risk posed by vulnerabilities in the environment and their potential impact to the business
• NorthStar provides a list of remediation actions in ranked order from the greatest reduction of risk for environment to the least, allowing the most efficient remediation of vulnerabilities in an environment

 

How do you get the most risk reduction for the investment?

• Threat intelligence provides real-time information regarding which known vulnerabilities are actively being exploited in the wild, have been exploited in the past, or where a known exploit exists
• Exploitation prediction intelligence provides real-time information regarding which vulnerabilities are most likely be exploited in the future
• Vulnerability and exploit prediction intelligence work together to reduce the set of vulnerabilities requiring remediation by 98%
• Data and rule engines work together to provide an automated capability to quickly and explicitly characterize the business importance of each asset
• Together, the capabilities above allow NorthStar to rank the criticality of assets by quantifying the risk posed by vulnerabilities in the environment and their potential impact to the business
• NorthStar provides a list of remediation actions in ranked order from the greatest reduction of risk for environment to the least, allowing the most efficient remediation of vulnerabilities in an environment.

 

How NorthStar Addresses Risk Quantification

 

We asked our team, “how does NorthStar address risk quantification and boost cyber resilience?” Here’s what they had to say:

“Organizations need to ensure that their limited resources are focused on remediating vulnerabilities that will result in maximum risk reduction for the organization. NorthStar’s ability to correlate asset data, organization context, vulnerability data, and threat intelligence enables this.

An important component of cybersecurity resiliency is understanding your environment. NorthStar’s ability to collect and correlate data from multiple, disparate, and large data sources provides an output of a single source of truth for all assets and vulnerabilities. Providing complete visibility into the environment.

Business impact and context is paramount to holistically understanding risk. NorthStar’s prioritization model allows organizations to determine the factors that make an asset or group of assets important to their business. NorthStar also takes into account additional organizational factors such as compensating controls and exceptions.

NorthStar also has the ability to derive contextual attributes from source data through its robust translation engine. This enables automatic categorization of assets into business services, business applications, compliance groups, etc.”

 

Take a proactive step towards quantifying cyber risk. Schedule a demo of NorthStar Navigator today.