Best Practices for Cybersecurity Risk Management amid Growing Threats and Limited Resources

Amid Rising Cyber Threats, Organizations Must Prioritize Security as a Core Business Objective

In today’s ever-evolving cyber threat landscape, organizations must prioritize security as a core business objective to protect themselves from potentially devastating cyber breaches. With public trust on the line and cyber breach headlines at an all-time high, understanding the value of cybersecurity and its impact on business performance has never been more crucial.

Despite the increasing complexity of the risk landscape, many businesses are still unprepared for the future, with resources not expanding as quickly as cyber risks and cybersecurity efforts failing to keep up with digital transformation. The number of attacks rose by 15.1% between 2021 and 2022, while material breaches increased by 24.5%. It is likely that many attacks were overlooked and not disclosed, resulting in understated figures.

The consequences of breaches can be long-lasting, with reputational damage, business disruption, and breach response costs being the most significant. Human error, misconfigurations, unknown assets, and poor cyber hygiene have been identified as the top causes of significant breaches.

To effectively manage and mitigate risks in an era of growing threats and limited resources, organizations must adopt a layered approach to cybersecurity and prioritize strategies to address critical cyber risks and assets.

Some key best practices to consider include increasing cybersecurity maturity, ensuring sufficient cybersecurity budgets, making cybersecurity people-centric, utilizing cutting-edge technology while limiting the number of products, securing the supply chain, protecting connected IT and OT assets, utilizing intelligent automation, and measuring performance effectively.

By following these best practices, organizations can reduce the likelihood of incidents and material breaches, as well as shorten the time to detect, respond to, and mitigate cyber attacks. As cybercrime continues to grow, organizations must stay vigilant and proactive in their cybersecurity efforts to avoid becoming the next headline in the ever-growing list of cyber breach victims.