How do you feel about your organization’s cybersecurity posture? Do you suspect that your organization has issues but don’t know which ones are most important?

Are you trying to achieve a cybersecurity certification such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001? Are you looking for a cost-effective risk assessment methodology to comply?

Do you get security questionnaires that ask about your organization’s risk assessments or risk registers?

Are you unprepared when you tell your executive team that you have “medium risk”? Do they give you puzzled looks when you say “medium risk”?

Traditional cybersecurity risk assessments present a lot of challenges. They compress impacts giving you unclear results. They push practitioners to set everything to “Medium” making the results worthless. Traditional assessments are not focused on the business needs.

If you are challenged with addressing the above questions then you should consider QuantiShield.

1. Understand the business environment. The interview process goes beyond understanding the technical nature of the customer’s environment. It includes understanding the key assets in the organization, the value of those assets, where they are and what the consequences would be if they were compromised. We interview the business leaders in the organization who can explain how they value their assets and organization. With this data, QuantiShield can provide a view that gives organizations a business risk assessment. It is one that can be presented to executives. Senior management can make sense of the cybersecurity impact to the organization. It provides data on how an organization should invest to reduce their cybersecurity risk.
2. Evaluate the technical environment. In order to understand an organization’s cybersecurity risk, of course we need to understand the technical environment. How strong are the cybersecurity controls? Are the organization’s cybersecurity processes being followed regularly? What technical gaps exist in the organization’s security? Are specific threat actors focused on this sector or organization? We take all of these into account with QuantiShield. The greater the understanding of the technical environment, the closer the risk model will be to representing the actual organizational risk.
3. Build the risk model. Once we have all of the inputs, we combine the customer’s data with that of industry data. We model the likelihood of certain events occurring based on cybersecurity literature and our experiences. The resulting model is our first look at the organization’s risk.
4. Test the risk model. Just like any model, we want to test it for accuracy and sensitivity to certain inputs. Once it has passed our internal QA process, we share a preliminary version of the model with the customer. This allows for us to adjust any assumptions that were mistaken or technical controls we might have missed. Once we are satisfied with the result then we move to the last step.
5. Translate and present the risk model. QuantiShield is intended for a semi-technical executive to understand and use the findings to make great cybersecurity decisions. These decisions include investment levels and which projects to prioritize. In order to enable that, we need a result that clearly articulates the challenges and opportunities for an organization. We translate the risk model into clear business language that most executives will understand. Instead of presenting hundreds of issues, the output has 15 to 30 issues identified with a focus on the top three to five. QuantiShield provides the technical details. But more importantly it provides the business context for decision makers to take action.

Getting started with QuantiShield is easy! Give Fractional CISO a call (617.658.3276) or email. Within weeks you will have a better grasp of your cybersecurity risk. You will then be able to tackle the top issues to reduce your risk. We look forward to hearing from you!