Transforming security costs into business value

Traditionally, cybersecurity investments were largely decided based on compliance obligations or sometimes even plain gut feel. This approach had several limitations – enterprises could end up with solutions that met the bare minimum security requirements but did not offer the best defence; the choice of tools was based on perception rather than protection and performance; investments were often reactive or a forced response to a breach. The shift to a risk-based approach, which prioritised security investments on the basis of threat likelihood or business impact, brought improvements, such as continuous monitoring and adaptive security, enabling organisations to pivot from reactive spending to proactive allocation. Further gains can be made by refining this approach, by aligning cybersecurity spending with strategic business goals, effectively transforming security from a cost item to a competitive advantage.

Measure and manage

The first step is to quantify cyber risks – methodologies include FAIR (Factor Analysis of Information Risk), Monte Carlo Simulations, and Annualised Loss Expectancy (ALE) – to translate obscure technical vulnerabilities into clear business language, and compare their attendant losses with and without security controls. This clarity allows enterprises to focus on mitigating risks with the greatest potential for harm and to make data-driven investment allocations. It also enables CISOs to better justify investments based on the prevention of incidents. Furthermore, risk quantification helps enterprises with an objective understanding of their ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from a breach, and their compliance with data-driven risk management mandates. 

Continuously assess threat exposure

 A global study on data breaches found that 40 percent of incidents took place in environments where data was stored on-premise and also on public and private clouds. Aggregating data across cloud, identity management systems, and application security for a holistic view of risks can help in this regard. In the same vein, a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) framework, covering identities, data, applications, and cloud, elevates reactive, intermittent security actions into a proactive, ongoing process. Organisations using this approach gain real-time visibility into threats across their environment, and also understand how these may be exploited and remediated. According to a leading analyst firm, businesses that plan security investments based on a CTEM strategy would see the number of breaches reduce by 67 percent.

With CTEM, enterprises can focus their attention on countering actually exploitable threats and “validated” risks, without frittering resources on inconsequential alerts. By enabling proactive risk mitigation, CTEM reduces the time gap between detection and remediation, from weeks to hours. Offering clear visibility into financial, operational, and reputational risks, it helps organisations maintain business continuity, avert losses, uphold their image, and comply with regulatory standards.

Use AI and platform power 

By leveraging artificial intelligence and platform-enabled services, enterprises can elevate risk quantification into a dynamic, contextual, and ongoing practice. AI-based platforms analyze huge datasets, including user behavior, network traffic, and threat intelligence in real-time, to continuously assess and reassess risks. Using predictive capabilities, they forecast future security trends and even proactively identify vulnerabilities to mitigate threats. The context-awareness of AI is especially valuable for aligning security investments with business impact: this is because, rather than assigning vague ratings, the platforms contextualise risks by calculating their impact on revenue, operational continuity, and so on.

AI-enabled platforms drive smarter allocation of security budgets by highlighting controls offering the highest exposure reduction per unit cost, enabling security leaders to make faster, more effective investment decisions. Last but not least, when organisations use AI to take a data-driven approach to security spending, they build further trust among their stakeholders.

Summing up

Aligning security spending with business outcomes can greatly improve the return on those investments. Organisations can achieve this by quantifying cyber risks, assessing threat exposure across systems and environments, and leveraging AI-enabled platforms. Collaboration between security and business for better understanding and alignment of goals, and embedding cybersecurity in C-level discussions, is necessary to keep moving the needle in this regard.

Written By - Brijesh Balakrishnan, VP & Global Head - Cybersecurity, Infosys

Read More:

Enlight Metals announced channel expansion strategy to build National storage distribution network

How AI video intelligence is transforming CCTV surveillance in India