Operational resilience | Risk Management & Reporting

January 13, 2025

The effective management of cyber security is an increasing priority for organisations everywhere. For those familiar with risk management principles, cyber security is more than another operational risk to be dealt with. Meanwhile, for those with less cyber security awareness, the discipline of rules-based risk management frameworks and checklists will support the management process. The maturity of an organisation’s cyber security culture is a key determinant.

Due to regulatory pressures, financial risks and stakeholder demands, cyber security risk management is becoming part of a broader governance function. With risk management models and practices evolving, risk management stakeholders should ensure their processes align with recognised cyber security frameworks. This is because straying too far from best practice guidelines can introduce other sources of risk.

A hybrid solution is best

For most, a rules-based approach is appropriate to manage risk requirements. Arguing that when cyber security is embedded in the risk management framework, efforts will become more systematic and effective. For others, a risk-based approach is implemented against a priority set of key businesses assets and data, enabling mitigation efforts to better match resource levels.

The best solution however, is to apply risk-based principles to a rules-based process. By prioritising a set of key business IT assets, and maintaining an adequate base level of controls, organisations can remain informed about the constantly changing cyber security threats and the effectiveness of the particular controls in place to defend them.

Adopting threat exposure management into your organisation

While the concept of risk-based management practices is not new, continuous and systematic risk assessment certainly is. Gartner argues that organisations utilising Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) techniques will reduce the risk of cyber attacks by up to 3X by 2026. Maintaining the effectiveness of cyber security controls is achieved by prioritising the remediation of critical vulnerabilities. The result being, improvement to the resilience and reliability of risk information available to operations and senior executive teams.

As TEM matures, the demand for this type of cyber security risk assessment will become more common place. As users seek faster, more current and reliable visibility of threats. TEM will move from a methodology to an automated process that drives risk management and resilience efforts. Data-driven systems that deliver evidence-based reporting will fundamentally change the cadence and reliability of risk management information and its role in improving organisational resilience.

How this impacts you and your teams

Technical teams will increasingly benefit from the implementation of objective evidence-based risk reporting tools. Quantitative bottom-up exposure and mitigation measurement will inform the cyber security risk management efforts to stay on top of the changing threat environment.

Business leaders will also benefit. Shifting from subjective interpretation to integrated evidence-driven risk information, that quickly informs stakeholders across the organisation of the current state of cyber security efforts. This will better inform broader organisational resilience efforts and corporate governance disclosure requirements.

At Huntsman, our Scorecard solution, Auditor and SmartCheck, form the basis of our threat exposure management offerings. These sit alongside our core SIEM solution for Threat Detection, Investigation and Response. Reach out to learn more about how we can support your organisation on the path to cyber resiliency.

Learn more by reading our 2025 cyber security predictions.

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