The world is becoming more technology-driven, and cybersecurity has risen in the minds of risk management and compliance professionals in organizations everywhere.According to the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risk Report, cybersecurity has routinely been one of the top 10 risks facing organizations throughout the world in both a short-term and long-term outlook.
Recently, we have seen a large amount of regulatory activity regarding cybersecurity and information and data privacy. The General Data Protection Act (GDPR) in Europe set the tone for this activity, and sibling laws have been popping up in countries and states everywhere.
As more and more fines have trickled in since the passing of these laws, it has become more apparent that these laws and regulations are no empty suit, but rather have proven to be a massive compliance and risk management challenge for organizations across the globe
Fighting Back Against Cyber Mayhem
In order to maintain security and privacy, organizations must look to develop an effective cybersecurity program and system that understands the obstacles of information security and will seek to establish several levels of defensive measures to combat a potential or emerging breach.
To meet information security and consumer privacy requirements, organizations must build an integrated strategy that manages governance, risk and compliance in information security from a much broader business perspective. The vast range of requirements and potential vulnerabilities that an organization faces in the realm of cybersecurity can encumber an organization unless these requirements and vulnerabilities are addressed in an integrated and standardized GRC(governance, risk and compliance) architecture and framework.
It is essential for organizations to put in place a technology architecture that can understand the vast requirements of all these laws and coordinate and correlate them with each other because of their extraterritorial reach. The organization can then synchronize controls across the entire organization and its third-party relationships to enforce privacy and more adequately manage the assessment of data security and consumer privacy. This is key in building a compliant framework for the organization’s IT governance and data security functions.
The world of cybersecurity and information management is a chaotic one, but the organization must be able to evaluate and assess cyber risks properly across the entire enterprise by giving the organization holistic visibility and understanding into cyber risk exposure spread throughout the business. The threat of a cyberattack is not to be taken lightly and is continually growing year by year.
