How to Achieve Higher ROI on Your Cybersecurity Investments?

Every day we hear news about cybercrime and how it is increasing. Cybercrime is becoming a severe issue, and we need to be fully aware of its impact. Every organization has a responsibility to make sure that its systems are equipped to handle any cyber attacks.

These days, it seems cyber attacks don't have any limits - which means that you need to have strong security measures in place that can protect you from online attacks. Many companies face huge losses due to cyber attacks, and often this area is the most neglected one.

As the attacks on businesses increase, so do the costs to protect your business. But how do you know if you are spending your money wisely? Read this blog about how to increase your ROI on your cybersecurity investments.

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is a significant field and one that is growing by the day. With the amount of data stored on virtual servers growing, it is no surprise that cybersecurity is growing.

An interesting way of looking at this concept is to think of it like an iceberg. Usually, cyber criminals seem like big fish in a small pond because our attention is usually focused on more apparent things. However, you need to remember that their businesses also function on multiple activity levels; they include elements that might be out of sight but are equally important!

How to Determine the Cybersecurity Needs of Your Business?

Cybersecurity should be taken seriously; too many companies overlook the financial and reputational risks involved. Everyone in your company should be aware of the high consequences threat actors may have if they break into your system, such as leaking sensitive information such as personal details about customers.

Hackers can hold your business hostage by encrypting your data, effectively operating as a ransom. Employees may not even have a space to work if hackers vandalize or shut down all the computers and networks.

Steps to Assess the Level of Cybersecurity Needed

1. Define the amount of risk your business will face if the security of your data is compromised.

2. Take VA/PT assessments to check your current level of safety against ransomware.

3. Define the main objective to secure the healthcare of your Cyber system and data.

4. Seek professional advice from a service provider on the proper level of security as per your needs.

The Cost of Cyber Attacks: Statistical View

We saw a dramatic increase in cyber attacks last year. Such attacks had various motives, including monetary gain, reputational damage, and political gain, to name a few.

As of last year, there were 1.16 million documented cases of cyber attacks reported, nearly three times more than in 2019 and 20 times more than in 2016! That's like 3,137 incidents every day! 80% of all companies encountered such security breaches this year, too - with ransomware attacks increasing by 148% since last year alone.

In 2021, the rate of cybercrime will rise exponentially due to the increase in IoT implementations. Resourceful cybercriminals are already hijacking IP-enabled devices, creating malicious programs that appear as legitimate IP-enabled home appliances, so they can gain access to corporate systems for purposes of stealing IP and confidential data.

Furthermore, cyber attacks will cost the world somewhere around $20 billion in 2021, which is 57 times more than the cost of ransomware attacks in 2015 ($325 million).

Investing in a Strong SOC

• A SOC (Security Operations Center) is a unit of trained professionals whose goal is to monitor, identify and respond to cyber attacks as they occur.

• For organizations who face an increased risk of either their brand or customer data being compromised by an outside threat, building a SOC can both protect them from further loss and prevent a potential disaster from occurring before it has a chance to run its course.

• Another option is to enlist the services of a managed security service provider (MSS P) who maintains ownership and responsibility of monitoring your security framework and responding to incidents. This can be a great option for the smaller organizations that want to focus their investments on their business. They will benefit from no longer needing to pay people's salaries, benefits, overtime pay, and so forth — tasks that aren't directly related to their core competencies.

Cost of Cyber Attacks vs. Cost of Cybersecurity

As the famous quote says that" one must be better safe than sorry." This quote works completely in this situation; in cybersecurity, the cost of a new solution or service can be a fraction of the actual loss that a corporation suffers after a cyber attack.

To provide evidence following are the incidents that took place due to lack of cybersecurity:

• Consider Volunteer Voyages, a one-person small firm that lost $14,000 in fraudulent charges when an internet hacker stole its debit card information, which the bank refused to pay.

• DoorDash, a popular online food delivery startup that recently had a major data leak, with hackers having accessed private user data for over 4.9 million customers, resulting in thousands in expenses.

• You wouldn't think that Amazon would be hit by DDoS attacks when the site is among the biggest online today. But in 2015, Amazon went offline for over an hour when a denial-of-service(DDoS) attack actually took them out for about $75 million in losses.

A  recent survey by McKinsey revealed that 75 % of experts consider cybersecurity to be a top priority. Now in comparison, let's see how different losses would have been prevented if some security would be present:

• Adobe had 750,000 records exposed. In this incident, anyone with a web browser could access the leaked information, including account creation dates, Adobe products used, and emails.

• From the data, it's clear that about 28% of breaches include malware, which would mean an average of $71 billion could be saved if an effective antivirus solution were in place.

On average, companies go through about 6-14% of their annual IT budget on cybersecurity. That's less than a quarter of the total amount allocated towards cybersecurity in general, which is quite feasible. A study conducted towards the end of 2018 concluded that most firms reimburse 10% of their cybersecurity IT spend.

But, How to Increase ROI on Cybersecurity Investments?

The Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and experts from the cybercrime domain confirm that most of these attacks are automated. They tend not to be targeted as much. They might be 'opportunistic' attacks wherein your usernames and passwords are what the attackers tend to use over and over again to attempt a breach of a system.

A growing number of ransomware attacks can be clearly explained by hackers who tend to exploit a data breach before launching a ransomware attack wherein your usernames and passwords become forthcoming. Once they know this, it's a piece of cake for them to break into systems.

For this reason, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and CISOs of firms need to focus their cybersecurity investment on initiatives that could potentially increase the efforts of such attackers. They can pursue an attack, thereby increasing the amount of computational power involved in the pursuit of such an effort.

Firms can maximize their ROI on cybersecurity by the following steps:

1. Look out for hazardous active threats: Organizations need to check again after the automated threat detection with robust firewall services. Different threats are like-

• Malwareware and blackmail: Operations that require big losses to gain more value generally target organizations using vulnerable software products. These vulnerabilities are maximized in devastating earnings before being exploited by potential extortion of the organization's assets to restore systems.

• Third-party losses: These are the payroll claims against a business for damage caused by a third party. The costs may exceed the organization's insurance policy and include numerous cases from other businesses in the same area.

• Invasion of privacy: Theft of digital assets from computers or servers with the purpose of jeopardizing privacy or obtaining private data.

1. Seek professional security providers: for professional help, seek managed security service providers, that is, outsourcing security services instead of handling them in-house. This makes the security issues being resolved better and professionally. Many organizations like CISCO, Palo Alto, CyberArk are leading companies in cybersecurity.

2. Build a strong action plan: Firms should take a risk-based approach to develop a strong action plan related to the investment made in cybersecurity. They need to make such a ready-to-use plan to combat incidents to uphold cyber-resiliency.

With insights from data-driven feedback, you can make a clear plan to CI SOs and CIOs about protecting your organization by improving your security program. If you do this enough times, you will be able to enhance your security program over time and make the best of your cyber investments.

How can SOAR Maximize Cybersecurity ROI?

Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) is a system of connected programs that work together to prevent and respond to security problems in an organization.

The objective of employing a SOAR platform is to make physical and digital security operations more efficient. It makes sure you can effectively deal with an incident before it develops into a disaster by requiring all CIOs to work more closely with their teams and keep track of what's happening at any given time.

It provides three main functionalities:

1. Security orchestration: In orchestration the use of vulnerability scanners, endpoint protection products, end-user behavior analytics as well as firewalls, intrusion detection systems as well as intrusion prevention systems (IDS s/IPS s) and security information and event management (SIEM) platforms as well as external threat intelligence feeds can all be used in order to better protect from cyber attacks.

2. Security automation: It is the automatic handling of security operations-related tasks and. It is the process of executing these tasks – such as scanning for vulnerabilities or searching for logs – without human intervention.

3. Security response: SOAR helps automate response and perform inline blocking of threats. It also includes threat management, reporting, and intelligent sharing.

Why is SOAR the Most Viable Solution?

SOAR makes your investment in cybersecurity most viable as it affects the performance of your SOC.

• Makes teamwork better: Your organization will face a hard time working between many tools and dealing with many data alerts all at once. SOAR makes your SOC team better and more communicable.

• Helps automate processes: SOAR allows you to automate all the processes completely, making the work more efficient and less time-consuming.

• Separates false alerts: Due to many alerts, separating correct and false ones is very difficult and time-consuming. SOAR helps you with this problem too. It automatically separates the false alerts and makes the job easier.

Conclusion

We all know that cybersecurity is an essential concern for businesses worldwide, but it can be hard to know where to start. As with many things, the more information you have, the better decisions you can make.

Hopefully, this blog post has given you some helpful information on where to begin on your journey to improve your cybersecurity. We are always happy to help you make the most of your business technology!