In 2022, the finance industry suffered the second-highest number of data breaches. Besides implementing an attack surface management solution, the finance sector must also ensure its remediation product can quickly and efficiently address cybersecurity risks.
If you’re in the market for a cyber risk remediation product, this post outlines the key features to look for to maximize the ROI of your new IT security tool.
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Top 4 Capabilities of the Best Cyber Risk Remediation Product for Financial Services
These features will help you optimize your risk management processes to the unique threat landscape of the finance sector.
1. Cyber Risk Prioritization
According to the 2023 Cost of a Data Breach report by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, businesses that responded to cyber incidents within 200 days paid an average of USD 1.02 million less in data breach damages.
To improve cyber threat response times, security teams need to understand which security risks should be prioritized amongst the noise of data constantly flooding security operations. An ideal risk remediation tool should be capable of measuring the potential impact of each threat in a financial entity’s risk profile - a process made possible with security ratings.
Efficient Cyber Risk Remediation reduces cybersecurity incident responses, decreasing data breach damage costs.
Security ratings are objective, unbiased evaluations of an organization’s cybersecurity posture. Based on a rating system ranging from 0-950, security ratings assess an organization’s resilience against various cybersecurity threats.
Understanding which remediation tasks will have the greatest positive impact on security postures streamlines workflows for immediate cyber threats - by helping security teams design the most efficient remediation plans and broader security strategies - by reducing Incident Response Plan execution times.
The ability to quantify cybersecurity risk positively impacts a wide scope of cybersecurity applications, including:
- Critical asset identification - Security ratings make it easier to measure internal and third-party assets against your enterprise risk threshold.
- Third-Party Risk Management - Security ratings allow service providers to be ranked by criticality, creating a pathway to advanced Vendor Risk Management strategies like Vendor Tiering.
- Vulnerability Assessments - Understanding the impact of risk assessment responses on your security posture streamlines vulnerability management for internal and third-party security controls.
- Security policies - KNowing the projected impact of specific cyber risks helps security teams design the most effective security policies for endpoints and information systems.
How UpGuard Can Help
UpGuard helps financial institutions track the health of their security posture with an advanced security rating feature pulling insights from 6 critical attack vector categories - 1) website security, 2) network security, 3) email security, 4) phishing & malware risk, 5) brand & reputation risk, and 6) questionnaire risk.
By leveraging its security rating methodology to project remediation impact, UpGuard helps information security teams make intelligent risk mitigation decisions, leading to efficient cyber risk management strategies.
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2. Cybersecurity Interoperability
Cybersecurity is now a multi-disciplined initiative. Financial organizations can no longer demarcate the security strategies of Information Technology. For the highest chances of defending against advanced cyberattacks, like ransomware attacks, all security solutions must work together to form a single defense entity.
Learn how to defend against ransomware hackers >
To align with this principle (also referred to as Cybersecurity Mesh Architecture), a risk remediation product for the finance sector must integrate with risk management initiatives, directly and indirectly mapping to remediation processes, such as
- Data protection strategies
- Unauthorized access prevention strategies
- User authentication protocols
- Insider threat detection and prevention
- Real-time attack surface management
- Threat intelligence feeds
- Penetration testing programs
- Firewall configurations
- Business continuity plans
An increased emphasis on cybersecurity program interoperability will result in fewer cybersecurity tools, resulting in a less complex cybersecurity ecosystem - an attribute that could reduce your data breach damage costs by USD $1.44 million.
Organizations that reported low or no security system complexity experienced an average data breach cost of USD 3.84 million in 2023. Those with high levels of security system complexity reported an average cost of USD 5.28 million - a 31.6% increase.
- 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report (IBM and the Ponemon Institute).
How UpGuard Can Help
The UpGuard platform includes attack surface management and risk management modules addressing internal and external risk exposures. By forming a framework for a holistic cybersecurity program, UpGuard offers the most comprehensive level of sensitive data protection with minimal IT ecosystem complexity.
Watch the video below for a quick tour of the UpGuard platform
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3. Process Automation
Business process automation has significant positive cybersecurity impacts. More efficient security processes mean cybercriminal and threat actor activities can be detected and intercepted faster. Faster response times reduced data breach damage costs, which could result in savings of up to USD $1.76 million in the event of a data breach.
Organizations implementing Security AI and automation identified and contained breaches 108 days faster on average and reported USD 1.76 million less in data breach damage costs.
- 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report (IBM and the Ponemon Institute).
An ideal risk remediation tool for the finance sector should take advantage of automation opportunities to establish a foundation for a scalable risk remediation program.
How UpGuard Can Help
UpGuard’s security processes are developed through the perspective of establishing a scalable and cost-effective cybersecurity product supporting every aspect of cyber risk management.
Watch the video below for an overview of UpGuard’s risk assessment automation features.
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4. Cybersecurity Reporting
A financial cyber risk remediation product should include a reporting feature for keeping stakeholders and management teams informed about the efficacy of remediation efforts. Though a classical communication medium, cybersecurity reports are a very effective tool for justifying cybersecurity investments during board meetings.
The effectiveness of cyber risk remediation efforts can be tracked by demonstrating security posture improvements over time (by tracking security rating changes) or by monitoring the changes in the number of critical risks that are discoverable by the remediation tool.
An idealistic risk remediation product also addressing the third-party attack surface will be able to generate reports demonstrating improvements in threats detected with risk assessments, such as compliance gaps with popular NIST frameworks - a particularly valuable feature for financial services working with gov agencies.
How UpGuard Can Help
The UpGuard platform includes a reporting feature that generates detailed cybersecurity reports with a single click. Once generated, board reports can be exported as editable PowerPoint presentation slides, significantly reducing meeting preparation time for security teams and CISOs.
Different reporting templates give security teams the option of reporting different aspects of their remediation efforts. Options include tracking overall security posture changes over time and security risk criticality distribution within specified attack vector categories.
