The COO's / CTO's / CISO's Guide to Maximizing Security Protection While Minimizing Risk Using Valerity's Cybersecurity Risk Minimization Method
Learn How to ALWAYS Know if Your Security Controls Are Up-To-Date and Protecting Your Company.
Most companies don’t have exact knowledge that their security controls are up-to-date, and few have an active means to track how current their security controls are.
As an executive in charge of your company’s cybersecurity, we know you are under increasing pressure to ensure your company is protected. With “bad actors” constantly finding new ways to attack company systems, staying abreast of the latest in security is challenging, even with the right tools and controls in place.
It’s even harder when you don’t have the right controls or the means to track them.
We developed the Cybersecurity Risk Minimization Method a comprehensive process to help companies maximize their cybersecurity protection and minimize the risk of information security breaches / cyberattacks. The goal here is to ensure you have exactly the right security controls in place with a security dashboard keeping you abreast of daily activity. That’s where the magic happens. And that is the purpose of our comprehensive method.
There are 5 phases to the Cybersecurity Risk Minimization Method.
1. Risk Assessment
In this initial phase, we take a complete look at all of your firm’s security controls, hardware, network, vendors and all other relevant points to help you get a solid understanding of where your security stands today.
This includes careful analysis of all or your software, hardware, IoT devices, servers, SaaS and other providers, partners, vendors and your staff.
We look at your entire infosec system, technology assets and systems, and help you gain a full understanding of your security controls. We look at all of this in conjunction with your company’s risk profile to ensure your security controls are aligned with your risk profile.
Our experience has shown that most firms have never done a complete risk assessment, and even fewer have done so with their firm’s risk profile in mind.
After a deep dive into all of these areas, then we look to see where there may be issues, problems, needs, etc. And that takes us to the next step.
2. Security Roadmap
In this phase, we build you a roadmap that takes you from where you are to where your security controls are up-to-date and have minimized your risk according to your risk profile. This is the strategy portion of the process that allows us to fix any problems, get rid of any wasteful spending and implement any new controls needed to maximize cybersecurity and reduce your risk.
This strategic phase is critical to success, but it is where many consultants stop and leave you with a really nice-looking report.
We ensure that your roadmap is aligned with your firm’s goals, risk profile, and also that it’s aligned with the growth of your firm. If you aren’t planning for the future and your growth, you’ll find yourself quickly back wondering if/how your security is protecting you.
Again, this strategic phase makes it clear how you are going to get from where you are now to where you need to be.
3. Controls Implementation
This phase puts our Security Roadmap into action and makes all of those strategic decisions in the past two phases become reality.
This is often the phase where many companies fail, because they don’t see this entire process through to the end and complete the transformation and optimization of their information security systems.
Taking the right steps to update your security controls is critical to ensuring you are protecting your company. Even missing one step can leave you vulnerable. We ensure that all steps are covered and that the entire Security Roadmap is implemented.
Another essential part of the Controls Implementation phase is ensuring proper training for your employees to ensure success. It’s important all of your employees understand security risk and how their participation helps keep your company safe from attack and/or data breaches.
4. Specialized Feedback
The 4th phase of the Cybersecurity Risk Minimization Method identifies the meaningful metrics that make sense for your security plan. We want to monitor the things that impact your cybersecurity to make sure you have a way to keep everything on track.
We work with you to create a dashboard that allows you to stay on top of critical issues, intrusion rates, threat attempts, and other risk factors.
This phase ensures that at all times you know it’s monitoring the critical elements that keep you safe and on track.
5. Security Loop
The key to making this all work is understanding this process is not a one-time thing. Our businesses, security threats, clients, partners, etc. all change on almost a daily basis. If you complete this process and think you are done, in a few months you’ll be looking at the security controls you have in place and wondering again if it’s right or still relevant to your business.
The Security Loop phase ensures that does not happen. Getting maximum protection from your security controls is an ongoing process. As things change, your strategy and roadmap will have to change with it. Therefore, you must have routine and regular checkups on your progress.
The Security Loop sets up those checkpoints and ensures that you complete those checkups. It’s the only way to ensure that you know exactly where you are and where you are going on an ongoing basis. While you will be monitoring your metrics on a daily/weekly basis, you need to step back at least quarterly to make sure you are still on track.
If you look at the Cybersecurity Risk Minimization Method graphic above, you’ll notice that there is an arrow that goes from Security Loop back to Risk Assessment. The idea is that this process is ongoing and regular.
Once the initial work is done, the subsequent iterations of your assessments won’t take nearly as long, because you understand your current security ecosystem and then just need to make sure it’s still on track given new security risks that will come as your company grows. And the Risk Assessment phase will be made much more efficient due to the meaningful metrics already established in the Specialized Feedback phase.
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