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Cybersecurity Journey Requires Holistic Approach

As the threat landscape continues to evolve, organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of a proactive and holistic approach to cybersecurity. A recent survey by Aon’s 2023 Global Risk Management Survey found that cyber attack or data breach remains the number one risk facing organizations today.

To mitigate these risks, organizations must adopt a comprehensive strategy that combines:

  • Risk identification and assessment
  • Risk mitigation
  • Response preparation
  • Recovery
  • Risk transfer mechanisms

Identify and Assess Cyber Risk

The first step in this journey is to identify and assess cyber risk. Organizations should collect and examine data and insights to understand the full range of impacts from cybersecurity exposures, including how security controls affect balance sheet exposures. This information can then inform leaders’ strategic decisions about how to avoid, mitigate, or transfer cyber risk in alignment with the organization’s overall mission and objectives.

Mitigate Cyber Risk

A critical aspect of any cyber-resilience journey is testing and updating business-continuity and disaster-recovery plans based on changes to tools, technologies, and procedures. Security and technology teams should continuously evaluate evolving threats and provide quantifiable evidence of the effectiveness of current controls to insurers and the marketplace.

Organizations should focus on security controls that mitigate ransomware attacks, particularly controls that are critical parts of the insurance underwriting process. Aligning with best-practice control standards, such as those from NIST or CIS, can further aid organizations in shoring up cybersecurity while supporting compliance with evolving regulatory requirements.

Prepare Cyber-Incident Response and Recovery

Recovering from a cyber incident is often a complex, protracted process. Preparing in advance can allow organizations to initiate this process much more quickly and with greater success. Incident response, containment, and investigation efforts should be undertaken alongside an assessment of financial and operational impacts, including third-party and insurance claims.

Transfer Cyber Risk

Once an organization has quantified its maximum possible cyber losses, it can regularly assess and adapt its cyber-risk acceptance and transfer strategies with informed input from all stakeholders. Risk transfer is important to deliver financial resilience, and transfer options are not limited to traditional insurance placement – captive insurance and alternative capital are also viable approaches to support balance sheet protection.

Employee Cyber-Defense Training

Organization-wide cyber-defense training is a critical component in mitigating risks. The importance of complying with cybersecurity measures should be clearly communicated from the top levels of an organization and reinforced with regular messaging, training, and support. Establishing a robust cyber culture can be one of the best ways to help mitigate cyber risks.

Support Employee Wellbeing

While arming employees with best practices to guard against falling prey to fraudulent acts is imperative, supporting employee wellbeing is also vital. Stressed and disengaged employees are often more likely to make mistakes or deliberately circumvent cybersecurity measures. Supporting employee wellbeing can help reduce the risk of human error and promote a culture of cybersecurity awareness.

In conclusion, a holistic approach to cybersecurity requires organizations to:

  • Identify and assess cyber risk
  • Mitigate cyber risk through testing and updating business-continuity plans
  • Prepare for incident response and recovery
  • Transfer cyber risk
  • Prioritize employee cyber-defense training and wellbeing

By taking a proactive and comprehensive approach to cybersecurity, organizations can better protect themselves against the evolving threat landscape.

Source: Aon’s 2023 Global Risk Management Survey

General Disclaimer: This document is not intended to address any specific situation or to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or other advice. While care has been taken in the production of this document, Aon does not warrant, represent, or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness, or fitness for any purpose of the document or any part of it and can accept no liability for any loss caused by reliance on it.

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