Moving from centralized cybersecurity to "cybersecurity as a service"
Data breaches are on the rise, and no company is immune to cyber attacks; cyber attacks that occur via third parties are particularly difficult to manage, making their risk assessment vital to the success of the company cybersecurity initiatives. While businesses are ramping up efforts to protect themselves from cybercrime (both from inside the company and outside), they often find that addressing the challenges created by compliance issues, additional costs, and equipment, and staffing are overwhelming.
There are two primary options for managing cybersecurity. Businesses can fund and operate their own in-house solution, which typically involves a centralized department (IT) that handles all cybersecurity risk assessments and operations. As companies grow, this option becomes increasingly untenable, as the centralization creates efficiency and staffing problems. Since the cybersecurity responsibilities and control are shifting to departments beyond IT, such as procurement and other individual business units, it is increasingly important to spread responsibility for cybersecurity across an organization. Managing all the aspects of cybersecurity, such as vendor risk, in-house is costly, inefficient, and difficult to scale.
Companies can also partner with a third-party cybersecurity solution provider, which offloads the cybersecurity risk management to a trusted partner. It also translates into fewer staffing challenges and more effective use of corporate resources. The movement from centralized cybersecurity to engaging a third party to manage digital security issues (cybersecurity as a service) is gaining momentum. A third-party solution can be more cost-effective, efficient, and shift the burden of security across the organization.
Growing businesses face serious cybersecurity challenges
Part of the movement toward CSaaS is actually positive: Companies are expanding. As the markets heat up, businesses are finding new areas of growth to tap into, which not only increases the size of the company, but also the amount of possible attack surface. Larger businesses simply have more departments and resources to manage, and those departments face their own unique risks. Many in-house cybersecurity solutions are not easily scaled and involve the application of more resources than needed for a smaller business. Companies (and naturally, each of their business units) also have access to more customer information: This is a natural outcome of doing business over longer periods of time and of tapping into the power of additional consumer data sets from companies such as Equifax, Intelius, and DataSift. Big data is expected to be worth more than $56 billion by 2020, with continued growth foreseen into the following decade due to the increased need for fresh information. All consumer data must be protected, and a centralized, in-house solution may not be able to effectively manage all the disparate sources of data. With great power comes great responsibility, and so governments across the world are increasing regulations to protect consumers. While the U.S. has been slow to move forward with some regulations, the European Union has not. GDPR has had a strong effect on how businesses manage and protect consumer information, notably via increased costs (for example, Facebook was hit with lawsuits totaling 3.9 billion euros over its noncompliance with GDPR). Of course, as technology improves, so do the attacks. Cybercrime is expected to grow at an accelerated clip because of its low barriers to entry and execution and high possible returns. No business is immune to a potential attack, so maintaining cybersecurity needs to be a high priority at every company.
Third-party solutions can help manage costs and boost efficiency
It’s no secret that in-house security teams generate significant costs. You not only need to provide salaries, time off and health insurance but since technology evolves quickly, you must invest in ongoing training for your in-house team. It can also be quite costly to keep experienced, well-trained staff members. Moving to CSaaS cuts the cost of having in-house security staff. It also changes your cybersecurity management from a capital expense to an operating expense. In addition, it significantly reduces the amount of equipment that your business must store and manage. Capitalizing on a CSaaS solution means that your organization can operate more efficiently. Your best employees can focus on their jobs instead of juggling the challenging demands that naturally arise from cybersecurity risk management. It also means that you don’t need to be an IT manager to handle vendor risk assessment or waste time going through the IT department to address issues. Each department can address their vendor risk assessments using a third-party platform, which means that the time needed to evaluate risk is reduced. In addition, the implementation of a platform to manage vendor risk directly results in improved access to cybersecurity experts, so if challenges arise, qualified assistance is available.
Third-party solution providers support successful cybersecurity outcomes
Cybersecurity is an important part of doing business. Effectively managing cybersecurity risk involves leveraging your current resources to best protect your customers while streamlining operations. Third-party solutions are rapidly becoming the option of choice for businesses because they allow for the reduction in expenses, make staffing easier to manage, improve the company’s ability to protect digital resources, and boost access to cybersecurity specialists. By decentralizing cybersecurity, each department becomes responsible for its own security operations and risk assessment. A platform like CyberVadis can enable your business to more effectively address its cybersecurity needs by managing its third-party risk assessment.
The CyberVadis platform is a scalable solution that covers the full risk assessment process, allowing people outside of the IT department to perform risk assessments of third-party vendors without the need to hire additional experts or invest in ongoing training. The platform includes standardized assessments and shareable report cards, mapping to all of the most important international standards. CyberVadis allows your business to shift the burdens and responsibilities for third-party risk assessment more widely across the organization.
Interested in learning more about how the CyberVadis platform can help your business with third-party risk assessment?
Contact one of our representatives today to see how CyberVadis can help you better manage your cybersecurity challenges.