What is security reporting?
Security reporting is the practice of communicating metrics about security, risk, and the performance of security controls to stakeholders throughout an organization. Executives, boards, security and risk leaders, and security practitioners all require robust reporting to better understand the security landscape and make data-driven decisions about managing risk and enhancing security performance.
Driving data-driven risk decisions with security reporting
Security and risk management professionals today are under great scrutiny. Their companies have spent heavily on cybersecurity programs over the years, and their executives and board members want to understand the return on the substantial investment they’ve made. These stakeholders are also keenly aware of their responsibility for oversight, and they want security reporting that can drive data-driven decisions and conversations about security and risk.
Yet, for security and risk managers, compiling the right metrics for a cyber security report has traditionally been time-consuming and challenging. Many reporting solutions include metrics that are too detailed or too vague to be helpful. Other solutions fail to provide the context that would make the data meaningful to executives and board members who are not steeped in the technical details of cybersecurity.
Bitsight can help. Bitsight’s daily Security Ratings provide a dynamic, data-driven measurement of the security performance of companies and the cybersecurity posture of their vendors. Leveraging this data, security leaders and risk managers can produce cybersecurity reports that effectively measure, manage, and clearly communicate their security programs to senior leadership, board members, and external stakeholders.
What to include in security reporting for the board
Boards and C-suite executives want to be focused on cybersecurity, but they often lack specific knowledge of technical details. Consequently, security reporting at the board and executive level must frame risk in business terms and help leadership understand how cybersecurity impacts the company directly.
Context is critical. Board members and executives won’t have any idea how to interpret data about the number of intrusions in a detection system, for example. To make that information meaningful, it must be presented as part of an historical trend, or as a report that compares the company to competitors and peers. The context for a cyber risk report may include information about past performance, how the metrics appear in different business units, how they compare to peers and competitors, and how they align with cybersecurity frameworks.
When providing metrics, it’s important to only include data that meaningfully communicates risk exposure or security performance. When security leaders provide too much data, it’s harder for the most important areas of risk to get the focus they need. The most pertinent types of metrics include audit and compliance metrics, especially information around fulfillment of legal requirements. Operational effectiveness metrics are also essential – these are the quantitative, down-to-earth metrics that reveal the reality of risk and security performance.
Bitsight Security Ratings enable security reporting that delivers the context and essential metrics required for effective oversight and data-driven decision-making about the investments, priorities, and programs required to measure and reduce cyber risk.
