2014 Global Cyber Executive Briefing

Lessons from the front lines

Cyber-attacks can be extremely harmful. Tangible costs range from stolen funds and damaged systems to regulatory fines, legal damages, and financial compensation for injured parties. However, what might hurt even more are the intangible costs -- such as loss of competitive advantage due to stolen intellectual property, loss of customer or business partner trust, loss of integrity due to compromised digital assets, and overall damage to an organization’s reputation and brand -- all of which can send an organization’s share price plummeting, and in extreme cases can even drive a company out of business.

Being resilient to cyber-risks starts with awareness at the board and C-suite level; a recognition that at some point your organization will be attacked. You need to understand the biggest threats, and which assets are at greatest risk -- the assets at the heart of your organization’s mission. 

Who could potentially target your organization, and for what reasons? Which assets are attackers likely to view as most valuable? What are the possible scenarios for attack (see Table 1), and what is the potential impact to your business? 

Questions such as these can help determine how advanced and persistent the cyber-threats to your business are likely to be. This insight allows you, as a C-suite executive or board member, to determine your organization’s risk appetite and provide guidance that helps internal and external security professionals reduce your risk exposure to an acceptable level through a well-balanced cyber-defense.

Although it isn’t possible for any organization to be 100 percent secure, it is entirely possible to use a mix of processes for prevention, detection, and response to keep cyber-risk below a level set by the board and enable an organization to operate with less disruption. 

To be effective and well balanced, a cyber-defense must have three key characteristics: secure, vigilant, and resilient.

Secure: Being secure means focusing protection around the risk-sensitive assets at the heart of your organization’s mission — the ones that both you and your adversaries are likely to agree are the most valuable.

Vigilant: Being vigilant means establishing threat awareness throughout the organization, and developing the capacity to detect patterns of behavior that may indicate, or even predict, compromise of critical assets.

Resilient: Being resilient means having the capacity to rapidly contain the damage, and mobilize the diverse resources needed to minimize impact — including direct costs and business disruption, as well as reputation and brand damage. 

This executive briefing is a starting point for organizations to understand their most important cyber-threats. It highlights the top threats for seven key industry sectors -- retail, manufacturing, e-commerce & online payments, online media, high technology, telecommunications, and insurance – and offers real-world stories and practical insights to help your organization begin to assess its threat profile and stay a step ahead of cyber-criminals.

By highlighting real-life cases, we hope to make clear that being hacked is nothing to be ashamed of. Breaches occur at all organizations – not because they are badly managed, but because hackers and cyber-criminals are getting smarter every day. By sharing information about breaches we can learn how to better protect ourselves – an imperative being promoted by the Partnering for Cyber-Resilience ² initiative of the World Economic Forum.

The stories clearly show that breaches are inevitable: your organization will be hacked someday. They also show that we all depend on each other for a resilient cyber-space. For example, online media can be used to spread malware; vulnerabilities in the high-tech sector affect other industries that use digital technology; and disruption in online payments impact e-commerce. By sharing and understanding these cases and taking responsibility at the C-suite and board level, we can all work together towards a safer cyber-space.

 

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¹ http://www.verizonenterprise.com/DBIR/2014/

² http://www.weforum.org/issues/partnering-cyber-resilience-pcr