As the financial impact of cybersecurity breaches continues to grow,
organizations are increasingly moving to more reliable, quantifiable
methods to assess their risk factors and how to best protect themselves
from business losses. The
2023 RiskLens Annual Cybersecurity Risk Report is
the first of its kind that provides visibility into the actual impact
of top cyber risks, based on real-life incidents experienced by
companies in the past year, rather than relying on more subjective
surveys.
"This first Annual Cybersecurity Risk Report
provides the industry with much needed visibility into the business
impact of the most common cybersecurity events across many industry
verticals," said Nick Sanna, CEO, RiskLens.
"Cyber risk
quantification (CRQ) enables organizations to finally understand and
manage their cyber loss exposure in financial terms that business
leaders and corporate boards understand. These findings are consistent
with what we've heard and seen from customers for years. We have long
believed that clarity comes through cyber risk quantification (CRQ) in
terms of dollars and cents, not guesswork or improbable scenarios. Now
we have data that goes into more depth than ever before which confirms
this."
Key Findings
This report was
designed to provide reference estimates for the probability, loss, and
loss exposure of common cyber events. It summarizes the findings by
industry and event themes, and details how actionable variables, such as
security stance and data retention management, can reduce risk
exposure.
- No
industry is immune, with public administration and healthcare heading
the list of industries with the most total risk exposure.
- The
top two risk themes by overall exposure are web application attacks,
with the highest overall loss exposure, and insider errors, which were
more likely but less costly. The most expensive theme by loss is system
intrusion.
- Businesses
can improve their security posture by reducing data records at risk and
lowering their event exposure by up to 88 percent. The report further
demonstrates how organizations can lower losses by 60 percent and event
probability by 67 percent.
"With the average cost of a data breach increasing 13 percent in the last two years to more than $4.35M, according to the 2022 IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report,
quantifying security risk financially is the best way to prioritize
initiatives and gain executive buy-in," writes Julian Meyrick, managing
partner and vice president, security strategy risk and compliance,
security services at IBM (a RiskLens partner) in his contributed
article, "Using Risk Quantification to Empower Decision Makers and
Reduce Cyber Risk Across Highly Targeted Industries."
For a complimentary copy of the report, please click on the
link.