Due diligence and fiduciary responsibility for corporate executives is now widely acknowledged to include exercising sound judgment and effective controls in the domain of cybersecurity. There’s no escaping the responsibility to protect corporate information and infrastructure and eventually the law will catch up with this reality. Until it does here’s what you should be doing to right now to exercise due care in managing cybersecurity risk.
1 – Be pragmatic, there are more risks than you can possibly address. If you try to do everything you will end up doing nothing.
2 – Get a baseline of the controls you currently have in place, how effective they are and compare yourself with NIST 800-53 or the Consensus Audit Guidelines. (HINT: Remember step 1 and don’t overthink this, your assessment shouldn’t be a six month exercise.)
3 – Do something! Prioritize your risks and address ONLY the things that can show measurable improvement, i.e. reduced risk. If you’re stuck in analysis paralysis just start with Consensus Audit Guidelines and address the ones that you’ve found to be vulnerabilities in your baseline.
4 – Document and tell your story using words and numbers that matter. Telling the board that SQL injection vulnerabilities have been reduced because you implemented a Web Application Firewall is why security often doesn’t get “a seat at the table”. Talk in term of compliance and risk, they get that.
5 – Stop buying tools and adding complexity until you’ve mastered the ones you already own and have laid in the process (documented) to use them effectively and in an integrated fashion.
As Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Apply this approach in exercising due care with respect to cybersecurity.