RiskXchange uses data-driven insights to prevent breaches and reduce an attack surface.
Cyber exposure – the vulnerabilities created when we use computers or network technology – grows and expands over time. It’s not static. And as the number of cyberattacks increase, it’s never been as important as it is now to stay on top of your organisation’s cybersecurity posture.
According to Deloitte, cyberattacks increased during the pandemic due to a changing work environment and 35% of those used previously unseen malware or hacking methods. And with organisations all over the world switching to the cloud to help bring together a remote workforce, it’s becoming more and more difficult to gain a true perspective on potential vulnerabilities or to pinpoint risks.
But don’t stress, there are a number of methods businesses can undertake to reduce cyber exposure and to secure an attack surface against potential threats. Let’s take a closer look at some effective strategies which can help manage risk and protect your business.
Utilise tools to automatically identify potential problems
As your company’s digital ecosystem expands, pinpointing where risk lies can prove challenging. Open ports, unpatched systems, misconfigured software, and other vulnerabilities can be hidden in shadow IT, the cloud, and across geographies and business units. The company needs to utilise tools that can automatically identify areas of cyber exposure so they can be tackled in a focused effort.
RiskXchange provides a powerful AI-assisted, yet simple automated and centralised 360-degree cybersecurity risk rating management approach. We generate objective and quantitative reporting on a company’s cyber security risk and performance, which enables organisations with evolving business requirements to conduct business securely in today’s open and collaborative digital world.
Cyber exposure response team
The IT security team is not the only department within your organisation that should be preparing for and responding to cybersecurity threats. It’s a job for the entire company. In order to effectively mitigate risks and reduce cyber exposure, the participation of department heads across the entire business is required. Educating all staff on how to prepare for cyberattacks and what to look out for not only ensures they are vigilant but helps reduce risk at the same time.
The structure might look something like this: While the Chief Information Security Officer and their team manage the immediate threat, legal teams will need to be involved to deal with any data breach – especially if any client, partner, or customer’s sensitive data was compromised in any way. The communications team will then become involved to limit any reputational damage to the company on a public level, and communicating the fallout from the event to partners, stakeholders, and customers. The sales teams will need to brief and deal with partners and HR managers will need to deal with the staffing response. That’s why it’s important to educate all staff on what to look out for so they can stay on top of threats, but also so they are prepared for any response plan that needs to be quickly and effortlessly implemented.
Plan for alerting stakeholders in case of a breach
As soon as a breach occurs, there must be a plan in place for alerting stakeholders and exactly how the organisation will deal with it. As technical teams work to mitigate the damage, the cyber exposure response team should alert partners and customers about what has happened. They should receive an outline of exactly what has transpired, how it impacts them, and what the organisation is doing to address it now and how they will prevent it in the future.
Not only is it important to share such information with stakeholders when an event occurs, but it’s also important to share breach information with your company’s vendors. This is important to ensure that any third parties associated with your organisation are taking the appropriate steps to check their networks to determine whether they have been affected by the breach.
Continuously monitor to prevent threats
Continuous cybersecurity monitoring provides real-time visibility into your organisation’s security posture, the overall security status of your organisation’s software and hardware, networks, services, and information. It also covers cybersecurity monitoring best practices, security misconfigurations and any other vulnerabilities that may occur.
The best continuous security monitoring solutions integrate with an organisations’ infrastructure and detect devices as soon as they attempt to connect to the network, thereby stopping cyber threats before any damage can be caused. Continuous security monitoring can classify devices by type, ownership, and operating system to deliver insights and visibility that enable preventive and reactive actions when the network is at risk.
Get in touch with RiskXchange to find out how to reduce cyber exposure of your organisation.
How RiskXchange can help
RiskXchange is one of the firms leading the fight against cybercrime, coming up with novel solutions to everyday problems experienced at the hands of hackers.
With full visibility over your eco-systems’ entire attack surface in near real-time, you can regularly monitor and mitigate risks to prevent unnecessary exposures. Our passive data collection methods are effective and have no impact on your network performance. Using data-driven insights to prevent breaches is the best way to reduce an attack surface and prevent cyberattacks.
About RiskXchange
RiskXchange is an information security technology company, which helps companies of all sizes fight the threat of cyber threats by providing instant risk ratings for any company across the globe. RiskXchange was founded and is led by recognised experts within the security industry, who have held leading roles within companies such as IBM Security.