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You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know the problem exists. Cybercrime affects manufacturers small and large, public and private. Without clarity of your cyber exposure and the risk to your business, how can you implement the essential security solutions to prevent and detect cyber threats, and respond to events to minimize business disruption and financial losses?

The Ponemon Institute presented findings in the 2020 Cost of Insider Threats: global study. This benchmark study was conducted to understand the direct and indirect costs that result from insider threats. One of the key takeaways from this study was the most expensive insider threat, per incident, is theft of credentials. These incidents have increased significantly in frequency and cost. In fact, the frequency of incidents per company has tripled since 2016 from an average of 1 to 3.2 and the average cost has increased from USD $493,093 to USD $871,686 in 2019. On an annual basis, organizations are spending more to deal with insider negligence, but the per incident cost is much lower than theft of credentials.

In addition to the Ponemon findings, Beazley Breach Response Services released a briefing outlining the reported incidents of their policyholders in 2019. They recorded an increasing number of ransomware incidents that resulted from attacks on IT managed service providers (MSPs) and other service companies providing organizations with infrastructure and support services. In some cases, these attacks halted the operations of hundreds of customers downstream from the attacked IT provider or vendor.

Beasley reported other disturbing facts from policyholders:

·      78% of manufacturing loses were caused by hack or malware

·      39% of all reported incidents in manufacturing were caused by ransomware

·      131% increase of ransomware incidents in 2019 over 2018

·      38% of middle market companies were impacted by ransomware events

·      62% of small and medium businesses were impacted by ransomware

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Before you can put in place effective cybersecurity controls to repel threats, you have to identify your weaknesses and highlight the areas that require the most attention. Through analysis and assessments, you can identify your cyber exposure, evaluate this risk, and determine where to focus your resources.

We help ensure that you implement the products and services your business needs, aligned with your security strategy, and not over-pay for enterprise security solutions that don’t fit your budget. In the absence of that clarity, it’s difficult to protect your network, data, and supply chain without overspending.

Understanding the risk assessment process

A cybersecurity risk assessment is the industry-standard method for identifying potential security threats that impact the integrity, confidentiality and availability of business assets, such as systems, applications, sensitive data, and intellectual property. Cyber risk commonly refers to any risk of financial loss, disruption, or damage to the reputation of an organization resulting from the failure of its information technology systems. Examples include hackers, non-technical or inadequately trained staff, backup operators, technicians, storms, floods, fires, or other environmental dangers.

While risk assessment methodology varies, the process generally involves the following focus areas:

  • Understanding the scope of the project.
  • Collecting relevant data.
  • Analyzing current policies, procedures and security measures.
  • Performing threat and vulnerability analyses.
  • Evaluating information to generate strategic recommendations.

Along with identifying potential risks, these assessments should also highlight security controls and solutions that can mitigate the chances of attacks, viruses, breaches or other threats to information assets. Thorough assessments seek to answer questions such as:

  • Where is there a lack of protection?
  • Who and what are the risks and vulnerabilities?
  • How can we minimize loss or damage caused by cyber attacks?
  • Does each security solution meet the corresponding regulatory requirement?
  • Which solutions are appropriate responses to the identified risks?

The answers to these questions guide informed cybersecurity choices, ensuring companies don’t expend time, effort, and resources on unnecessary or ineffective measures of defense. What’s more, the assessment can highlight overlooked risks that may require more attention than originally planned.

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You can perform cybersecurity risk assessments on virtually any digital application, device, and process within your business. However, the immediate focus should be on the internal and external systems that are most critical to operations. This can also include the elements that process, store, analyze or transmit sensitive information, such as personal data, confidential company figures or intellectual property.

A complete risk management process calls for continuous assessments to monitor and review the environment for new threats, as well as align security measures with changes in business processes. Our executive oversight process for continuous cyber exposure services for accountability and predictability is called Inspectionem℠.

STEP ONE: Security Strategy and Business Risk Analysis

The first element of your risk assessment is the security strategy and business risk analysis. The process is led by verbal interviews with key team members and executives to generate awareness around the potential cyber risk within your business. This will help you better understand the specific implications of cyber attacks on your company, as well as how we can focus the assessment efforts on your greatest concerns.

STEP TWO: Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing

Once we gather the relevant information from your team, it’s time to analyze the environment to determine whether the current safeguards are effective in maintaining data confidentiality and integrity.  Our assessments includes three major components:

  1. Scanning the environment to identify and understand the machines and processes used within the environment.
  2. Analyze the scan results to understand what critical vulnerabilities exist, and the potential impact that they could have.
  3. Interrogate exploitable vulnerabilities within the environment, and document potential risks affecting your business.

The insights from the assessment and testing will identify how the current security systems are working in accordance with your needs and expectations. What’s more, the process may bring to light the alternatives that are the most worthwhile improvements.

THE RESULT

In combination, the security strategy, business risk analysis, vulnerability assessment, and penetration testing form the foundation of your cybersecurity priorities. After conducting our assessment, we’ll report on the gaps that exist in your cybersecurity, and co-develop a remediation plan that utilizes advanced tactics, techniques and procedures. With a clear understanding of your cyber exposure, you will begin allocating resources toward probable threats that are likely to cause loss. Ongoing assessments will drive accountability and inform future decisions. After all, you cannot manage what you fail to measure.

Cybercrime affects manufacturers small and large, public and private. If you’re interested in learning more about our analysis and assessment services, contact us today.

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