Strategic Cybersecurity A Toolkit for Prioritizing, Coordinating, and Transforming Your Cybersecurity Program
By leveraging more than 30 years of energy expertise, ScottMadden has developed an approach to help clients implement cybersecurity programs that target enterprise risks and demonstrate tangible evidence of improving cybersecurity capabilities. This approach engages business stakeholders to answer the following strategic questions:
- What are our biggest enterprise cybersecurity risks?
- What is the appropriate response to these risks?
- How will success be measured?
- How will we get there?
We align with energy sector guidance to meet industry expectations, and we integrate with enterprise governance to direct and monitor implementation progress, ongoing performance, and assurance.
This report highlights ScottMadden’s approach to strategic cybersecurity.
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Strategic Cybersecurity
- A Toolkit for Prioritizing, Coordinating, and Transforming Your Cybersecurity Program
Strategic Cybersecurity: A Toolkit for Prioritizing, Coordinating, and Transforming Your Cybersecurity Program
- If your company is like most, cybersecurity has become both a priority and a source of frustration: Cyber risks are real and have the potential to be destructive to your organizations ability to provide service to your customers Yet, the efforts to address these risks often seem to have their own negative business impacts They are expensive They hurt productivity Their success is difficult to measure Rather then continue to throw money at cybersecurity and hope that nothing bad happens, energy providers must pursue an alternative approach: A more business-like approach to identifying cyber risks and the appropriate response to these risks An approach aligned with industry guidance and expectations to demonstrate appropriate diligence and rigor given todays environment An approach that establishes desired outcomes and measures progress against these outcomes This report describes a strategic approach to cybersecurity that engages both security professionals and business stakeholders in order to: Answer four critical questions to establish the direction of their cybersecurity programs Implement a cybersecurity program consistent with this direction Sustain and continuously improve program performance based on key program performance indicators This approach will help you target your most important enterprise risks and gain confidence in the ability of your cybersecurity program to protect your critical assets.
Energy Organizations Are Aware of Significant Cyber Threats and Are Investing in Efforts to Manage Their Risks
- Electric utilities core mission remains the samedelivering safe, reliable power to customers, but a new class of risks threatens this mission. Cyber risks have the potential to impair power-producing assets and their ability to deliver critical services to customers. The industry is responding. In ScottMaddens annual Energy Industry Cybersecurity Report, we identified the following key findings: Energy organizations acknowledge a growing cybersecurity risk and most expect their IT and Operation Technology (OT) assets to be attacked More than 50% categorized cybersecurity threats as either high or severe Most organizations have experienced a cybersecurity incident that resulted in either a data loss or disruption to operations In response, most organizations have implemented cybersecurity programs and consider their programs to be relatively mature
Despite These Efforts, Energy Leaders Are Not Confident That They Are Really Improving the Security of Their Critical Assets
- Risks and investments are increasing, but confidence in the organizations ability to secure critical assets is not keeping up. How can this be? Based on ScottMaddens experience working with energy organizations, we can point to the following reasons: There is a lack of meaningful measures of cybersecurity progress Senior leadership is not engaged in cybersecurity decision making Cybersecurity efforts are not tied to enterprise risks Cybersecurity efforts are siloed and tend to be confined to what the IT and/or security organization can directly control Successful organizations take a different approach to cybersecuritythey engage business stakeholders, focus organizational responses on enterprise risks, and deliver tangible outcomes. We call this strategic cybersecurity.
Strategic Cybersecurity Answers These Four Questions
Determine Your Most Important Assets
- 1) What are the biggest cybersecurity risks to our enterprise?
- All strategic efforts require an understanding of what is most important to achieving enterprise objectives. Strategic cybersecurity is no different. It focuses on what is most important rather than what is easiest to secure. Critical assets are not excluded because they are more difficult. Understanding enterprise risks starts with determining What am I trying to protect? Understand your mission critical business processes Identify which information assets support the success of these business processes and to what extent This is informed by, but not restricted to, compliance requirements This is inclusive of all enterprise technology assetsboth OT and IT
- Asset Business Impact
Engage Business Stakeholders in Enterprise Risk Discussion
- A business discussion of cyber threats makes them real. Your business community may not have deep knowledge of cyber risks, so discussions are mindful of the audiences knowledge level, but this does not let business leaders off the hook. They must have an acceptable understanding in order to provide thoughtful input into cybersecurity decision making and to sponsor cybersecurity efforts. This does not need to be overly scientificmost companies do not possess precise measures of likelihood and impact. Instead, the discussion should serve to educate business leaders, to provide context for the cybersecurity program, and as a starting point that leads to a more detailed understanding of enterprise risks.
- 1) What are the biggest cybersecurity risks to our enterprise?
- Likelihood
- Impact
- Negligent Insiders
- Denial of Service
- Size of Shape =
- Negligent Third Party
- Insecure Endpoint
- Nation-State Attack
- Insecure Web Apps
- Malware
- Insecure Smart Meters
- Perceived magnitude of vulnerability
- Cyber-Crime Breach
- Hacktivist Attack
Determine Desired Capabilities Based on Enterprise Risks
- 2) What is the appropriate response to these risks?
- Cybersecurity needs to be managed as a business process. Cybersecurity is improved by maturing and continuously improving the capabilities that support this business process. Start by using the Department of Energys Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model (C2M2) to determine cybersecurity capability gaps: Evaluate existing capabilities by technology asset owner (e.g., IT, generation, etc.) Different owners will often have different maturity levels Evaluate desired maturity levels based on risk assessment results Minimal (baseline) capabilities should be determined for all asset types using industry guidance Target maturity levels should be informed by the criticality of the asset type Determine capability gaps and develop responses for high-priority gaps Business leaders are engaged in both evaluating cyber risks and determining the appropriate response
Use Cybersecurity Metrics to Gain Confidence
- Metrics are developed to eliminate uncertainty and build confidence in cybersecurity efforts. Use them to support decision making and demonstrate the value of cybersecurity. Metrics are developed using the following structured approach: Identify important cybersecurity risks Determine capabilities necessary to mitigate risks Develop questions that must be answered to assess progress toward implementing capabilities and mitigating cyber risks Create the metrics and collect the data that answer these questions
- 3) How will success be measured?
A Programmatic Approach Delivers Strategic Outcomes
- Organizations attempt to build and improve cybersecurity capabilities through a series of individual projects. The problem is that this leads to siloed or disjointed efforts. This comes from thinking in terms of discrete parts rather than a cohesive whole: Projects are initiated to address tactical needs by focusing on individual capabilities As other necessary capabilities are identified, new independent projects are launched Unfortunately, this approach often leads to an outcome that can be less than the sum of its parts A programmatic approach delivers strategic outcomes by coordinating individual efforts that address the entire system.
- 4) How do we get there?
- Cybersecurity Policies and Controls
- Technology and Automation Capabilities
- Business Processes and Employee Behaviors Changes
- Enterprise Mission and Strategic Objectives
- Enterprise Risks
- Governance: Evaluate, Direct, Monitor
- Management: Plan, Do, Check, Act
- Program and Organizational Change Management
- The cybersecurity program includes the following: Program Governance and Oversight Sets program direction, monitors performance against direction, and establishes management accountability for program objectives within the context of cybersecurity policy Policy Framework Aligns enterprise cybersecurity policies and controls with program objectives and energy industry guidance Establishes the enterprise cybersecurity expectations Cybersecurity Functional Management Responds to program direction and facilitates achievement of cybersecurity program expectations throughout the enterprise Program Implementation Capability Coordinates and aligns cybersecurity project efforts and supports organizational change management in order to achieve desired outcomemitigation of enterprise cyber risk to enterprise mission and strategic objectives
Building and Sustaining a Cybersecurity Program
- Establish Program Direction
- Define Program Capabilities
- Implement Program
- Sustain Program
- Develop program charter Determine guiding principles Define scope Design governance Design policy framework Evaluate enterprise risks
- Assess current capabilities C2M2 assessment Define target state Identify and prioritize gaps based on: Risks Gap size Capability dependencies
- Determine required business changes Determine organizational roles and responsibilities Determine resource and skill requirements Create roadmap by: Control Asset Business unit Launch and manage program
- Implement functional and control ownership Define and implement measures Implement assurance and continuous improvement processes
- Engaging senior leadership in cybersecurity decision making is the single most important factor in creating a successful cybersecurity programmore than technology or funding.
- Putting It All Together
ScottMaddens Cybersecurity Services
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