The value of a comparative metric for investment decision-making
Cybersecurity risk oversight is a major – and ever-increasing – role for boards of directors, and one that is front and center on their agendas. Assessing whether the level of risk is acceptable is central to this, and poses challenges. In recent years, boards have often underestimated cybersecurity risks, with resulting large breaches with significant costs. Looking ahead, it is helpful to examine the reasons for this underestimation, and to identify steps to improve cyber risk assessment.
Experience at Cybeta, a Liberty Advisor Group Company, indicates that two key factors are at play.
- First, there remains a lack of cybersecurity expertise at board level. Many recent drivers of risk have outpaced board members’ levels of understanding, because technology and cybersecurity expertise is usually outside of their core fields of expertise.
- Second, cybersecurity professionals have done a poor job of communicating risk to the board. In this complex and fast-moving environment, it is all too easy for cyber experts to rely on technical jargon that confuses people without a background in cybersecurity.
Instead, there is a need for a widely accepted and understood metric to evaluate cyber risk at the board level and beyond.
The only way to protect your organization is to understand how potential attackers think. By mimicking a hacker’s reconnaissance and integrating proprietary data feeds in near-real-time, Cybeta created Threat Beta™, a predictive algorithm that measures future breach likelihood. Our predictive algorithm enables you to answer three major questions that every board needs to know:
- Threat Surface: How extensive is your company’s presence on the Internet?
- Weighted Vulnerability Record: How does your company’s vulnerability compare with that of your competitors, and with all companies? How do your technologies compare with theirs, and with the state of the art?
- Attack Likelihood: Based on advanced indications and warnings on emerging cyber-attacks, what is your company’s chance of falling victim?
These three elements are all considered and then augmented with deep and dark web content to create a score that is straightforward to communicate to executive teams board members.
This augmentation with deep and dark web content ensures that Threat Beta™ takes full account of global activity against technologies by malevolent actors, quantifying their offensive threat capability, rather than simply focusing on your company’s defensive security set-up.
Updates to the Threat Beta™ risk score based on the global landscape can be derived on a weekly basis to see how the core risk to the company is evolving. Board members can be given more detailed analytical briefings by their cyber teams and everyone can see the underlying drivers of Threat Beta™ score trends – which may be increasing due to no fault of the company – helping inform appropriate investment decision-making to mediate cyber risks.
Cybersecurity risk oversight is a major focus for boards and one that will remain front and center on their agendas. Looking ahead, Threat Beta™ enables companies to remove any uncalculated risk and to identify steps to improve cyber quantification for boards of directors.
Out-think your adversaries and gain access to the critical insights your organization needs to improve its cyber posture at present, over time, and into the future. With proprietary technology and decades of offensive cyber operative experience, Cybeta’s Threat Beta™ solution quantifies network risks, identifies vulnerabilities, and predicts attack probability related to your network and brand.
Liberty Advisor Group and Cybeta provide you with a predictive edge that keeps your business, data, and IP safe from cybersecurity attacks and ahead of the competition. Protect your business and mitigate cyber threats prior to impact. Contact us at info@libertyadvisorgroup.com to discuss customized cybersecurity solutions for your business.
About Liberty Advisor Group
Liberty Advisor Group is a goal-oriented, client-focused, and results-driven consulting firm. We are a lean, handpicked team of strategists, technologists, and entrepreneurs – battle-tested experts with a steadfast, start-up attitude. We collaborate, integrate, and ideate in real-time with our clients to deliver situation-specific solutions that work. Liberty Advisor Group has the experience to realize our clients’ highest ambitions. Liberty has been named as Great Place to Work, to the Best Places to Work in Chicago, and to FORTUNE’s list of Best Workplaces in Consulting and Professional Services.
