What is Cybersecurity Governance Anyway?
Cybersecurity governance gives IT teams a strategic view of how to control their organization’s security by defining its risk appetite, building accountability frameworks, and assigning decision-making responsibilities. It also involves creating security programs that align with a business’s overall objectives and comply with applicable regulations and standards.
How Cybersecurity Governance Works
Cybersecurity governance is a crucial component of any organization’s governance that wants to address its cyberspace dependence on prevalent adversaries. Without it, organizations cannot fully address their cybersecurity needs.
Steps to Improving Cybersecurity Governance
Here are six steps that can help an organization grow and sharpen its cybersecurity governance program:
- Establish the current state.
- Complete a cyber-risk assessment to understand the gaps, and create a roadmap to close those gaps.
- Complete a maturity assessment.
- Create, review and update all cybersecurity standards, policies and processes.
- Many describe this as low-hanging fruit — and it is — but it is a heavy lift. Take the time needed to establish the structure and expectations of cybersecurity governance.
- Approach cybersecurity from an enterprise lens.
- Understand what data needs to be protected.
- How are the cyber-risks aligned with enterprise risk management?
- What is the relative priority of cybersecurity investment as compared with other types of investments?
- Increase cybersecurity awareness and training.
- With the rise in remote work driven by COVID-19 and the ongoing adoption of hybrid work models, we are no longer just training our internal employees. With so many people working from home and many children attending school online, it is critical that the entire family understands good cyber hygiene.
- Cyber-risk analytics: How are threats modeled and risks contextualized and assessed?
- When creating the risk model, consider all the risks to your organization — external, internal and third party.
- Monitor, measure, analyze, report and improve.
- This is not a one-and-done exercise. Establish regular assessment intervals, measure what matters, analyze the data and create an improvement plan.
- Report to the board on cyber maturity and the cyber-risk posture across the organization.