Cyber Liability | BitSight

Understanding cyber liability

Cyber risk remains a critical concern for business leaders. As the landscape of cyber threats continues to evolve, leaders are justifiably concerned about mitigating risk within their digital ecosystem and ensuring supply chain security. Too often, however, risk is conceived only in technical terms rather than business terms, making it harder for executives and Board members to understand the real business impact and financial liability of cyber risk.

Security and risk leaders can remedy this by quantifying the financial impact of risk. By presenting security performance findings as a form of cyber liability, security leaders can ensure the organization’s stakeholders have the data and business context they need to make more informed decisions about security investments.

BitSight can help. As the world’s leading Security Ratings platform, BitSight offers a suite of solutions for performing cyber risk assessments and implementing cyber risk best practices. BitSight’s Financial Quantification for Enterprise Cyber Risk provides quick and easy calculation and assessment of financial exposure based on risk within an organization’s digital ecosystem.

Why cyber liability matters

C-suite executives and the Board of any organization are responsible for deciding on funding for a wide range of competing priorities. While they may be keenly interested in matters of cyber security, these stakeholders may not automatically understand the financial impact of programs proposed by security teams. By framing their security recommendations and program proposals in terms of financial impact and cyber liability, security leaders can help non-technical stakeholders assess cybersecurity programs in the same way they evaluate other initiatives that receive funding.

By quantifying cyber risk in financial terms, security leaders are essentially analyzing risk in the same way that organizations look at other types of risk – how it will impact the financial health of the organization. Discussing risk in terms of cyber liability puts the intangible nature of risk into a tangible business context. As a result, stakeholders can better understand the potential financial exposure related to risk vectors and impact scenarios.

Armed with these data-driven insights, the organization’s decision-makers can then allocate resources and prioritize remediation efforts based on the financial impact of funding – or not funding – a program to address a specific gap in security performance.

Determining the financial impact of cyber liability has traditionally been a complex and time-consuming process. This task is made even more challenging by the ever-changing nature of an organization’s cybersecurity posture. To provide stakeholders with the data on cyber liability, security leaders need tools that can streamline and automate the process of financial quantification. That’s where BitSight can help.

Reporting on cyber liability with BitSight

The BitSight Security Ratings platform transforms how companies manage third-party risk and cyber security performance. BitSight’s industry-leading Security Ratings provide the data and insight for a suite of solutions that help organizations improve security posture, mitigate risk in their supply chain, and streamline operational risk management.

BitSight Financial Quantification for Enterprise Cyber Risk enables security leaders to quickly and easily assess the potential financial exposure of individual vulnerabilities as well as overall cyber risk. Providing cyber liability insights in a language that makes sense to the business, BitSight provides a framework that leads to meaningful conversations with the Board and other stakeholders on the impact of security and risk decisions.

Features of BitSight’s Financial Quantification

Powered by Kovrr’s proven models developed for the cyber insurance industry, BitSight’s solution offers an efficient and easily repeatable way to quantify risk in terms of cyber liability and financial impact.

Built on BitSight Security Ratings

BitSight’s Financial Quantification solution complements visibility provided by BitSight Security Ratings and can be managed without any additional headache for security program managers. Using multiple data sets from real-world cyber events, and details of an organization’s digital footprint and security posture, BitSight simulates the financial impact of risk using multiple cyber scenarios. These detailed metrics reveal the financial cost of cyber liability. They also allow security teams to focus efforts on improving programs and controls to maximize the impact of risk reduction programs.

On-demand analytics

In contrast to consulting engagements or internal projects, BitSight’s Financial Quantification is available on-demand. BitSight makes it easy to drill down into cyber event examples to quickly and efficiently diagnose the underlying causes that can impact financial exposure.

Game-changing insights

With a financially quantified view of the organization’s cyber risk and cyber liability, Board members and non-technical stakeholders can better understand cyber risk in financial terms and evaluate the ROI of cybersecurity programs. Leaders can make decisions based on an understanding of which programs will most significantly reduce risk and cyber exposure. Built-in reports enable security leaders to share insights with Board and executive stakeholders quickly and easily, using cyber security risk assessment report samples and templates or creating custom reports on the fly.

Why choose BitSight?

BitSight has pioneered the security ratings industry since its founding in 2011 and is today the most widely adopted security ratings solution. BitSight’s ratings enable security teams to continuously monitor security performance and risk throughout their digital ecosystem and vendor network, helping the organization to make faster, more strategic decisions about cybersecurity policy and third-party cyber risk management.

BitSight is trusted by some of the world’s largest organizations to provide a clearer picture of their security posture. Among BitSight’s 2,100 customers are 20% of the world’s countries, 25% of Fortune 500 companies, 4 of the top 5 investment banks, and all 4 of the Big 4 accounting firms.

FAQs: What is cyber liability?

What is cyber liability?

Cyber liability is a calculation of the consequences of cyber risk within an organization, including financial and reputation loss, as well as potential data exposure. Security and risk managers can use cyber liability numbers to quantify the impact of a variety of cyber risk scenarios, helping executives and Board members to make security decisions based on their financial impact.

What are security ratings?

Security ratings are a data-driven measurement of an organization’s security performance. Much like a credit rating, security ratings provide an outside-in view of an organization’s security posture. BitSight, which is the most widely used security ratings service in the world, develops its Security Ratings by gathering data from 120+ sources concerning 23 key risk vectors in four major categories: evidence of compromised systems, security diligence, user behavior, and publicly disclosed data breaches. By analyzing and weighting this information, BitSight produces a Security Rating that assesses an organization’s overall security performance.

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