ICYMI – Mega ISACA Update – Data Breach Costs and Hanlon’s Razor

I recently coauthored an article for the ISACA Journal with a coworker about imputing the cost of a data breach from record count. We also recorded a podcast based on the article. You can read the article here and listen or watch the podcast.

I also authored a piece for the @ISACA newsletter on the role of mistakes in cybersecurity. Fortunately, there is a great adage that sums it up ;-)

Business Process Maps are Boring

I recently wrote this piece for ISACA on business process maps. Clearly, this is tongue in cheek – there are a lot of benefits to building a map of business processes and for a security professional, these maps can become the basis of lots of security and risk reporting.

You can read my thoughts on this here

ICYMI – Interviewed on CISO Insiders Podcast

I had a great time talking with Ben Ben-Aderet on the CISO Insiders Podcast. He asked really interesting questions about not only information security but also caused me to reflect on myself and what I learned during my time in the industry. You can check it out here (he bookmarked different topics so you can jump around). Thanks to Ben and GRSee for hosting me.

Learning From Other’s Mistakes

I wrote this piece after I read one person’s take on the relationship between near misses and audit findings. I wanted to reflect my thinking on the matter in a way that gave risk organizations a useful function to pursue after an incident. You can read about the role that your near misses (and other’s) can be used in your risk program here.

ICYMI: Digital Trust and Improving Risk Programs

For my final update this year, I want to discuss my last two pieces for the @ISACA newsletter and ISACA Now Blog. The first is a piece on how Cyber Ratings are quickly becoming a standard for measuring digital trust. As the investor community wants more insight into which firms have a greater propensity for loss, there is a strong need for unbiased insight into the firm’s cybersecurity posture.

Secondly, I wrote this piece about a topic that many CISOs ask for advice on: how to build (and improve) their risk management program. This requires a dedicated focus on the business and mission of the organization and connecting it back to the technologies that support it.

Cyber Insurance Market Analysis

I wrote this piece as an analysis of what Marsh is experiencing in the marketplace. I wanted to have a cyber risk analyst’s take on the same data and to see where we could learn from their analysis and apply that in our practice.

One edit, it looks like I made a typo. The line that reads:

Spoiler alert: Less than 300 claims are made per year.

Should actually be:

Spoiler alert: Less than 300 claims are made per quarter.

I hope you enjoy it and please let me know your thoughts. You can read the full article here.

Rise of the Chief Trust Officer

I wrote a piece for ISACA about how the rise of the Chief Trust Officer role is changing the landscape for cyber security and cyber risk leadership. Borrowing from the CISO, CSO, CPO, CIO, and digital transformation roles, the Chief Trust Officer can become the go to role to govern technology and ensure customer’s trust is well protected.

The Future of Quantitative Cyber Risk Reporting

In my latest piece for the @ISACA newsletter, I address the US SEC’s interest in enhancing the cyber risk reporting requirements. The SEC has asked for feedback on this matter from the public. I used my feedback to them in the writing of this piece.

Cyber Risk Warehouse – 2022 April YTD ICYMI

I have a “warehouse” full of good cyber risk things to share with you below:

Here is an ISACA piece I was asked to write about things Cyber Risk professionals need to focus on in 2022

This ISACA column I wrote speaks to the role that bias plays in how cyber news is fed to us, and how that influences our own risk assessments.

This ISACA column talks about the tendency we have to focus on what’s within grasp when trying to resolve security issues, instead of digging deeper to find root causes

Finally, this ISACA column takes a stab at cooling the reports of “cyberwar” that are popping up everywhere. It’s still serious, but not yet warfare.

NACD Post: Connecting Cyber Ratings and Credit Ratings

My piece for the NACD was published today. Here I outline the connection that is being made by ratings agencies between cyber risk and business risk. For those of us in cyber risk, this will seem obvious but it’s profound that it is now gaining traction in business ratings.