Critical Capabilities of Cyber Risk Assessment Software Tools

As Boards and CEOs begin to grow concerned about security threats affecting their enterprise, CISOs and information security teams are faced with translating their cyber risks into business terms. Using cyber risk assessment tools is useful but only half the battle—to effectively communicate the organization's cyber risks, technical leaders need to employ cyber security risk assessment tools that help automate the menial workflows of assessments for web vulnerabilities. Here, we’ll examine the critical capabilities these risk dashboards must have to support organizations at varying maturity levels. 

Foundations of Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Tools

As we’ve explored before, this new role that cybersecurity leaders find themselves in - reporting to board members and the CEO and serving as a business function - has triggered the need for a more integrated approach, as these leaders must be able to report up consistently. Whether an integrated GRC tool or a pure cyber risk management solution, enterprises prioritize risk-based security solutions over simple checkbox compliance. The result is an organization driven by consistent security audits and security risk assessment (SRA) tools, with compliance being a facet of the overall strategy. 

The critical capability that an effective cybersecurity reporting tool will have is easy access to standard risk management frameworks. The more closely aligned compliance and risk can be for an integrated approach, the better. For example, the CyberStrong platform uses both NIST SP 800-30 risk scoring methodology as well as elements of the FAIR model for risk analysis. 

Cyber Risk Assessment Dashboards 

The next layer above the control assessment level is the aggregate within a given assessment. In this case, the critical capability for any cyber risk dashboard is the real-time delivery of network security information. Using real-time data can help illuminate identified security risks and lead to faster cyber risk remediation. 

While the representation reflected in these dashboards can vary based on the risk assessment framework an organization decides to employ, the core capability is relaying information throughout the organization to leaders. At a baseline, regardless of the framework used, these dashboards must deliver an inherent risk profile for the context of those controls. With automation being a high-level priority to save time for security teams, real-time cybersecurity dashboards empower leaders to make fast decisions and reduce the effort necessary to report to technical leaders. 

Learn more about dashboarding and reporting with our curated list of the best cybersecurity dashboards.

Automated Risk Reports 

Finally, for top-level reporting, automation becomes the most crucial aspect of a cyber risk management and assessment tool. Cybersecurity teams can waste countless hours generating reports to show progress to remediation and relay existing risks to business-side leaders. Where speed was the vital aspect at the dashboard level, the automatic creation of security assessments can reduce unnecessary team hours and redirect those efforts to remediation. 

The value of this cybersecurity tool is that platforms can create reports that never existed before in an organization. In the case of CyberStrong, the Executive Dashboard is something new to most organizations, but it saves cybersecurity teams massive volumes of time. Business-orientated reports help bridge the gap many organizations face today between technical and business leaders. Organizations must find a way to bridge that gap with a more integrated approach between security and business leaders. 

Integration, Real-time, and Automation

With data breaches capturing headlines seemingly weekly, the need for a high-level defensible view of cyber posture is more important than ever. The critical capabilities of a cyber risk management tool, which include integration of compliance and vulnerability assessments, real-time display of high-risk data, and automated reporting of risk trends and cybersecurity maturity, are the capabilities that CISOs must look for in a cybersecurity risk assessment tool.