Cyber security is now not a secret for anyone, perhaps you might encounter words like cybercrime, hacking, and web security in your daily newspaper, online news, blog, magazine, etc. Due to the nasty afflux of cyber threats, organizations must take strict action against these culprits or they may have to face a critical time for their business. We habitually come to see millions of data breaches occur because of structural and organizational issues. Organizations are facing holdup in ceasing cybercrime in a complete manner. Thus, it seems difficult to carry a risk management oriented Cyber security model. Even after spending millions of dollars, cyber security has not achieved its true mark and senior leaders in organizations should have to understand that global economy is still affected with cyber crime.
Enterprises have to build strict security policies and parameters in a broad IT environment to mitigate cybercrime. A deep insight into the risk management and implementation of several protection methods is really needed. Let us go through some structural and organizational issues that holdup cyber security from addressing it effectively.
- Senior executives have to understand the changing world of cybercrime and should make cyber security risk management to cope with rising customer expectations without compromising the organization’s innovation ability.
- Cyber security is now spread among every corner of an organization including HR, product development cycle, business process, etc. For example, product development increases the customer data volume that is collected. It should be protected as well maintained as per data security policy.
- The risk associated with cyber security is quite difficult to measure. A single metric is not enough for the cyber security risk evaluation. Even after spending dollars on security, you cannot judge whether a security is enough or you need to put more effort.
- human behavior is the main reason behind cyber security as it is difficult to stop everyone from clicking on a bad link or visiting a phishing link. Organizations can offer training but cannot control the human behavior of an employee. How do you stop them from transmitting confidential information to insecure service? Front-line managers need to communicate clearly about security policy and employee behavior that seems difficult without breaking interference in an organization.
Cyber security is not only a task of lower or middle management but also a vital issue for CEO and senior management. An active engagement of senior staff can bring awareness among the rest managerial staff and employees.
Last year, the World Economic Forum has undertaken the survey about the impact of cyber-attacks and response promptness. It also focused on senior management involvement in cyber security practice. They found many CISO (chief information security officer) only meets CEO every few weeks, in other cases; the CISO has never met the CEO. It seems that a lack of communication channels is prevailing among management. The risk of cyber attacks could slow down the speed of technology and business innovation with as much as $3,000bn in total.
Cyber Resiliency:
Therefore, for companies that are intended for cyber resiliency, senior managers must follow the below steps.
- CEOs and the other senior management members should actively take part in the organization’s overall cyber security risk management including intellectual property loss, exposure of customer records; interruption in business operation, etc. business heads must cooperate with cyber security managers to prioritize the information assets and make strategies about risk reduction and operational result.
- As we have seen, cyber security affects every aspect of business therefore; senior managers should cooperate with business managers regarding cyber security implications in the product cycle, customers & location decisions, human resources, procurement process, and even in public affairs plan.
- Senior managers should change behavior regarding inside data handling that will motivate the sub managers in organizations to work more efficiently. Senior managers should send a periodic emails to staff about cyber security implementation and readiness. Senior management can advise front-line employees on taking security measurements for handling sensitive information.
- Senior management should set up an effective reporting channel of measurement on cyber security progress in an organization. Senior managers should understand the importance of policy and regulation from a business point. Many senior managers try to avoid such policies and do not join cyber security enforcement.
Cyber Security Model:
On the other side, enterprises have to build dissimilar cyber security models by following details in perception.
- Evaluate information assets and give them priority on the basis of risk assessment.
- A single protection method will not work for all models so it is necessary to mull over different security protection for information assets.
- From policy development to application development, the organization has to implement security in-depth including employee training from the beginning.
- Always deploy an active defense system against potential attacks. These systems can be implemented by assessing the external intelligence source and institution’s technology environment.
- Do practice immediate incident response from both the security team and marketing team. Enterprises can arrange cyber war games to enhance the knowledge of employees for immediate response ability against cyber attacks.
- Enterprises should provide knowledge about the value of information assets to every group of employees.
At last, we can easily judge that if cyber security is not properly dealt with, then it could slow down the technology pace and business innovation in coming years. Therefore, it is sensible for senior managers and enterprises to make rapid progress in the direction of cyber resiliency.
