It’s not that fixing Critical and High-Severity vulnerabilities is the problem; it’s that the Medium and Low severity vulnerabilities can pose significant risks as well. For any given vulnerability, we need to distinguish between its severity and the risk that results from it being present on a particular system on our network.

Essentially, one-third of analysts’ time is being spent on processing alerts that have unknowingly already been processed, and at present SOC teams are left with little ability to make this distinction resulting in massive manpower drain. 

In 2015, it seemed no one was safe from hackers. The year began with Sony reeling from a hack that put the studio and celebrities such as Seth Rogen and James Franco in a web of geopolitics and extortion. Seven months later came the high-profile Ashley Madison hack, which resulted in the release of the email and physical addresses for 37 million users. Cybercriminals stole $1 billion from banks in 30 countries as part of the Carbanak hack. Even the Director of the CIA wasn’t safe – his AOL email account was hacked by someone claiming to be a high school student.

The cyber threats we experience today have become frequent, complex and challenging.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy announced the hire of Arthur House as chief cybersecurity risk officer, the first to fill the role for the state.

While an organization’s CISO focuses on cybersecurity, they depend on the C-suite to combine business operations and necessary security measures to find success.

Findings from an annual Ponemon study on data breaches showed that while more companies have plans in place, they still lack confidence and are failing to take crucial steps as part of the preparedness process, preventing them from being truly ready for a real life data breach incident.

It takes months for most computer intrusion victims to learn they were breached.  Unfortunately, the hackers get busy much sooner, often stealing data within days if not minutes.

It’s essential that boards understand the organization’s cyber risks in order to successfully oversee overall company performance. CISOs and CSOs who can clearly convey cybersecurity to the board promotes better navigation of the organization in today’s uncertain cybersecurity world.