Reputational Risk Management

The impact of cyber events on reputational risk management

A cybersecurity incident can harm an organization in many ways – from interrupting operations to exposing intellectual property to the financial impact of remediation. But companies can't forget the damage caused by an attack or breach may be the harm to a business’s reputation, which can lead to losses at multiple levels. Companies suffering a breach may lose customers and prospective customers. Shareholders may abandon the company, driving down the stock price. And with the rapid spread of information through social media and negative media coverage, a damaged brand may ultimately lead to significant losses in revenue and profitability.

Clearly, reputational risk management must be a top priority for risk teams, leadership, and boards of directors. In cybersecurity, companies can best manage reputational risk through continuous monitoring programs. By constantly evaluating the organization’s security performance and the security posture of its third-party vendors, continuous monitoring can help mitigate risk while maintaining legal, regulatory, and fiduciary responsibilities.

As a company dedicated to providing trusted data and insights for managing cyber risk, Bitsight delivers industry-leading solutions that support continuous monitoring to enhance reputational risk management.

The benefits of continuous monitoring for managing reputational risk

While continuous monitoring solutions help mitigate the risk of cyberattacks, these technologies can also have a positive impact on an organization’s reputation in several ways.

Protection of shareholder value

Cybersecurity incidents often result in lost revenue from existing clients, a poorer win rate for new business, and a drop in share price. Preventing breaches through ongoing cybersecurity monitoring practices is critical to protecting shareholder value.

Protection of company value

For companies that are going public or being acquired, a robust cyber risk management program can drive up the value of the business. Conversely, companies that lack robust security programs – or worse, that suffer breaches – will likely lose opportunities and business value.

Competitive differentiation

Cybersecurity incidents raise doubt in the minds of potential customers about a company’s ability to keep confidential information safe. Companies that can avoid incidents through continuous monitoring will inevitably enjoy a competitive advantage.

Reduced third-party risk

Any outside organization presents a risk. Cybersecurity incidents in third-party organizations like partners, suppliers, and vendors can impact an organization’s reputation. Even more dangerous are threats that breach a company’s defenses by targeting a third-party vendor with a weak security posture. Continuous monitoring enables security teams to identify risk within third-party ecosystems and make data-driven decisions about ways to mitigate it.

Reputational risk management solutions from Bitsight

Bitsight created the world’s first cybersecurity rating in 2011 and has pioneered the industry ever since. Today, Bitsight is trusted by leading organizations worldwide as an invaluable partner in managing cyber risk and achieving digital resilience.

Bitsight offers a range of solutions that enable continuous monitoring of an organization’s security performance and the security posture of vendors and third-party relationships.

Bitsight for Security Performance Management

Bitsight enhances reputational risk management by enabling organizations to continually assess security controls and remediate gaps. With Bitsight, risk management teams can prioritize work and investments to improve security controls and maintain continuous visibility of the extended digital footprint.

Bitsight for Third Party Risk Management

Bitsight measures and continuously monitors third-party security controls to align risk tolerance with organizational objectives. Third-party risk management teams can perform vendor due diligence by continuously monitoring risk within third-party ecosystems and validating security controls across new and existing vendors. Bitsight’s vendor risk monitoring solutions enable organizations to manage constantly changing risk levels throughout the vendor lifecycle and collaborate with vendors to address areas of risk.

Bitsight for Fourth-Party Risk Management

Bitsight helps teams automatically identify vendor connections with other potentially risky fourth parties and validates security controls across the extended vendor portfolio. Automatic alerts identify security incidents within the extended vendor supply chain. Bitsight also delivers visibility into the concentration of risk-related service providers and technologies.

Bitsight for Vendor Risk Management

Bitsight Vendor Risk Management augments the third-party risk management process by helping to manage vendor risk throughout the entire vendor relationship. Third-party risk management teams can combine workflow automation with objective data when evaluating third-party vendors. This enhances reputational risk management while matching organizational and cybersecurity requirements.

How Bitsight Security Ratings impact reputational risk management

Bitsight Security Ratings can be a helpful reputational risk management tool, providing visibility into the security posture of organizations and their supply chains through the analysis of externally observable data. Produced daily, Bitsight ratings help organizations proactively identify, quantify, and manage cybersecurity risk throughout their ecosystem.

Unlike traditional cyber security analysis tools that review a company’s policies or conduct periodic scans, Bitsight Security Ratings continuously measure security performance based on data in four areas: compromised systems, security diligence, user behavior, and public disclosures of breach. This data-driven, outside-in approach provides a clear picture of cyber risk for any organization – without requiring information from the rated entity.

The higher the Bitsight rating, the more effective the organization’s security programs and controls. In addition to reviewing daily ratings, organizations can observe historical trends and drill down into the data on which ratings are based to understand where risk exists and how best to remediate it.

Why companies choose Bitsight

The leader in security ratings

Bitsight is trusted by many of the world’s largest organizations to provide an objective view of their security posture and to pinpoint risk in their supply chain. Bitsight’s solutions help organizations to improve security performance, quantify financial risk, mitigate third-party and forth-party risk, reduce the attack surface, and improve software supply chain security. Bitsight is the choice of 120 government institutions, 4 of the top 5 investment banks, 20% of Fortune 1000 companies, and all of the Big 4 accounting firms.

Deeper visibility

Bitsight ratings are based on over 120 sources – including both owned and licensed data – and provide unparalleled visibility into 23 risk vectors, many of which are unique to Bitsight Security Ratings.

A highly engaged community

The Bitsight application hosts conversations among the industry’s most robust community of cyber risk professionals, providing Bitsight customers with greater confidence in their third-party vendors.