Cybersecurity report creation is crucial for preserving stakeholders knowledgeable of your threat administration progress, particularly inside Third-Get together Threat Administration, which focuses on a threat area with probably the most important potential of inflicting an information breach.
What’s a cybersecurity report?
A cybersecurity report is a doc that overviews crucial details about your group’s safety posture. These reviews are supplied to stakeholders and board members to tell them of the group’s state of cybersecurity and degree of resilience to exterior safety incidents and rising cyber threats.
A typical cybersecurity report features a detailed but concise breakdown of all components contributing to a company’s total cybersecurity posture.Â
These may embrace:
Abstract of vendor cybersecurity efficiency, particularly for high-risk distributors with entry to delicate information.Third-party dangers impacting regulatory compliance.An outline of crucial safety dangers found in vendor threat assessments and their related threat remedy plans.The group’s cybersecurity efficiency towards business benchmarks.An inventory of vulnerabilities and cybersecurity dangers that enhance the group’s potential for struggling an information breach or cybersecurity incidentSummary of incident response efforts.Safety management deficiencies that create resilience gaps, new malware, ransomware, and cyber assault tacticsCommon varieties of cybersecurity reviews
Some frequent cybersecurity report examples embrace:
Board abstract report: A high-level abstract of the crucial components contributing to the group’s safety posture and the way its cybersecurity technique is monitoring towards its metrics.Vendor threat evaluation report: A abstract of the first cybersecurity threats found in a vendor’s threat evaluation, forming a foundation for the seller’s threat administration plan.Firm assault floor report: A report of all the first assault vectors throughout info know-how gadgets in a company’s digital footprint.Penetration testing report: An outline of the findings of a simulated cyber assault, figuring out weaknesses in safety measures doubtlessly facilitating unauthorized entry, ransomware assaults, and phishing assaults.Incident reviews: An in depth account of knowledge safety incidents, together with the character of the assault, impacted programs, and effectiveness of deployed incident response plans.Compliance and regulatory reviews: An illustration of the corporate’s adherence to inside safety insurance policies and cybersecurity requirements rules, equivalent to NIST CSF, HIPAA, and PCI DSS (compliance reviews are additionally useful for regulation enforcement companies investigating potential compliance violations after a significant safety incident, such because the CrowdStrike occasion).
Associated: How CISOs ought to deal with future CrowdStrike-type breaches.
These examples of cybersecurity reporting kinds could possibly be stand-alone reviews or parts of a single cybersecurity program report.Why are cybersecurity reviews necessary?
With rising oversight expectations throughout stakeholders, regulators, and senior administration, cybersecurity reviews are a useful help to safety groups, streamlining communication of safety program efficiency.
Your safety staff ought to combine a cybersecurity reporting coverage for 4 major causes:
1. Cybersecurity reviews simplify threat administration reporting to the board
Cybersecurity reviews are the first manner the board retains knowledgeable of the group’s evolving cyber threat publicity. With current main disruptions within the service supplier menace panorama, senior administration now acknowledges third-party threat as a elementary enterprise threat and expects safety groups to prioritize Third-Get together Threat Administration insights in cyber reviews.
2. Cybersecurity reviews streamline regulatory compliance monitoring
The language the board understands with probably the most readability is the language of {dollars} and cents. Although safety dangers may lead to important harm prices ought to they change into exploited by cybercriminals, the extra important potential for monetary affect stems from compliance violations.
Cybersecurity reviews assist stakeholders monitor the important thing dangers impacting the group’s compliance with business rules. A super cyber reporting template will even think about the affect of third-party dangers since this threat class has a big affect on compliance with strict rules, equivalent to PCI DSS, Common Knowledge Safety Regulation (GDPR), Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and, Well being Insurance coverage Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Third-party threat administration and regulatory compliance reviews assist senior administration monitor the return of TPRM answer investments.3. Cybersecurity reviews assist strategic decision-making
With common publicity to cyber reviews, the board could make clever enterprise selections that think about the group’s present state of cyber threat publicity, guaranteeing the corporate repeatedly evolves towards larger cyber resilience.
Vendor threat abstract cybersecurity reviews are particularly beneficial for supporting safe operational scaling selections. With the idea of a third-party threat remedy plan produced by a threat evaluation report, the board can examine the inherent threat publicity of potential third-party providers towards the strategic advantages of onboarding them, thereby securing the seller onboarding course of.
4-step information: The right way to write a cybersecurity report
To write down an efficient cybersecurity report, you may must cater these reviews to your audience (stakeholders, board members, and senior administration). Creating detailed reviews turns into more and more easy as you perceive the next elementary truths about senior administration and board members.
Fact #1: Senior administration is not going to care about technical dangers. They’ll solely care in regards to the monetary prices related to the danger.Fact #2: Senior administration will solely be all for cybersecurity dangers which might be necessary to them.Fact #3: Senior administration is not going to perceive cybersecurity technical jargon.
Contemplating these three elementary truths, the next 4-step framework will allow you to create a cybersecurity report that your board will admire.
Step 1: Perceive the cyber dangers that matter to the board
Step one of the cyber report creation course of is to conduct analysis to be taught which cyber dangers your board and senior administration employees truly care about. Interview all C-level employees and doc all of their major cyber threat considerations. Ideally, all C-level and senior govt employees ought to be interviewed to attain probably the most numerous profile of the group’s safety anxieties.
You should use the next questions as a template for such an interview:
What are your major cybersecurity considerations?Are you frightened in regards to the group struggling an information breach?Are you conscious of our present threat of struggling an information breach?Do you are feeling sufficiently knowledgeable about your efforts to handle your major cyber threat considerations?Are there any safety incidents or cyber assault occasions talked about within the information that you’re involved about?Do you know it is potential to undergo an information breach via a compromised third-party vendor?Are you involved in regards to the safety of our third-party distributors?Of all of the cyber threat considerations you listed, how would you get them organized from most important to least crucial?Ideally, you must solely must carry out this analysis course of as soon as, as it should outline the main target of all future cybersecurity reviews.
You will need to observe that your cybersecurity report shouldn’t be restricted to the varieties of dangers the board deems related. Nearly all of the board is probably going not accustomed to the technical points of cybersecurity, and sophisticated zero-day dangers will inevitably emerge and require the board’s visibility.
After collating your record of major cybersecurity considerations, quantify their potential monetary affect on the enterprise the place potential. Doing this may considerably enhance the relevance and worth of your cybersecurity report back to senior administration.
Most board members tremendously admire when safety groups make an effort to translate their major cyber threat considerations right into a language the board can perceive (i.e. {dollars} and cents).
This put up about cyber threat quantification outlines methodologies for calculating the monetary affect of cybersecurity dangers.
Step 2: Write an govt abstract
An govt abstract of a cybersecurity report is a concise overview of your complete report. This part usually covers the next factors for a given reporting interval:
(i). Cyber threat findingsA abstract of all main cyber dangers found throughout the reporting interval, emphasizing dangers deemed necessary by the board
This is an instance of a cyber threat detection discovering merchandise for an govt abstract of a cyber report:
“We discovered several third-party services impacted by two zero-day exploits – Log4Shell and Spring4Shell. Remediation actions were promptly deployed by installing the latest security patch issued by the product developers, in addition to bolstering our network security and firewall configurations. No sensitive information was compromised during this exposure, and no other internal systems were impacted.”
(ii). Cybersecurity incident summaryA abstract of all safety occasions and the effectiveness of respective incident response staff efforts
This is an instance of a cybersecurity incident merchandise for an govt abstract of a cyber report:
“We discovered that 80% of our critical third-party vendors, those supporting our critical, were impacted by the CrowdStrike IT outage. We used our Vendor Risk Management product to promptly identify and address all areas of our supply chain affected by the incident.”
Watch this video to learn the way Cybersecurity helped its clients promptly perceive their publicity to the CrowdStrike incident and deploy acceptable mitigation measures.
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(iii). Cyber menace summaryA abstract of all crucial menace intelligence developments that would affect the corporate
This is an instance of a cyber menace abstract merchandise for an govt abstract of a cyber report:
Due to our safety questionnaire automation options, all questionnaires have been promptly accomplished, confirming none of our distributors have been affected by the occasion. All safety questionnaires have been accomplished, indicating that none of our distributors have been affected by the occasion.”
UpGuard’s newsfeed indicates vendors impacted by security incidents mentioned in the media.(iv). Cyber risk mitigation recommendationsRecommendations for addressing cyber risks detected in the reporting period
Here’s an example of a cyber threat summary item for an executive summary of a cyber report:
“To mitigate the danger of employees falling sufferer to a rising pattern of phishing assaults, common safety consciousness coaching ought to be deployed throughout the group. As well as, a real-time vendor safety posture monitoring answer ought to be deployed to handle the board’s considerations in regards to the firm being impacted by third-party breaches, particularly throughout all of our crucial distributors.”
Step 3: Summarize vendor security posture performanceThis stage relates to cyber reports about the organization’s third-party risk exposure.
To address the board’s objection to cybersecurity jargon, this section of a cybersecurity board report should represent the complexities of the organization’s evolving third-party risk exposure in an easy-to-understand manner, best achieved with graphical elements.
It’s helpful to start at the highest level by indicating the vendor’s overall security posture, quantified as a security rating.
Snapshot of a vendor’s overall security rating taken from UpGuard’s vendor cybersecurity reports.
Security rating data integrations also allow the board to track the vendor’s security posture changes over time, an especially helpful feature for critical vendors.
Snapshot of a vendor’s security rating changes over time taken from UpGuard’s vendor cybersecurity reports.
It’s helpful for the board to understand how a vendor’s risk posture is distributed across different cyber risk categories. Here’s an example of how you could represent this graphically.
A break down of a vendor’s security rating by category, snapshot taken from UpGuard’s vendor cybersecurity reports.
A break down of a vendor’s security rating by category, snapshot taken from UpGuard’s vendor cybersecurity reports.The insights above are typically used in reports delineating cybersecurity performance for a single vendor. Such reports would also include the findings of cyber risks detected from questionnaires and other sources of security performance evidence.
A snapshot of the security questionnaire risks detected in a vendor’s risk assessment reports taken from the UpGuard platform.
Some board members will request detailed vendor risk assessment reports when they prefer to be involved in the risk treatment planning process for critical vendors. For board members preferring just an overview of the organization’s overall third-party risk exposure, including a vendor risk matrix in your cybersecurity report is helpful.
Here’s an example of a vendor risk matrix distributing a company’s vendor network across a scale of increasing business impact based on their security rating and criticality classification (where Tier 1 represents the company’s most critical vendors)
UpGuard’s vendor risk matrix tracks vendor security postures across all criticality tiers.
To learn more about the role of vendor risk assessment in developing a risk treatment plan for critical vendors, a process some board members will expect to be involved in, watch this video:
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Step 4: Identify your evidence sources
To highlight the credibility of your reports and increase the chances of the board agreeing with any costly remediation suggestions, identify all of the data sources you referenced to build your cyber report.
Evidence sources could include:
Security questionnairesCertificationsAutomate scanning resultsCompliance certifications
Example of a list of data sources a user referenced to build a cybersecurity report.
UpGuard’s Trust Exchange is a free resource that expedites the evidence-gathering process for vendor risk assessments and cybersecurity reports. The following video offers an overview of the tool.
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Best practices for cybersecurity reporting in 2024
When building your cybersecurity report, keep the following best practices in mind:
Be clear and precise
Producing a clear and concise report will ensure your intended audience—executives, board members, or security teams—can quickly understand your security suggestions without wasting time on clarification requests.Â
This will require the inclusion of high-level summaries and short explanations that get straight to the point. When technical stakeholders are reading your cyber reports, more detailed cyber risk explanations should supplement high-level summaries in a separate section of the report.
Above all, try to avoid using cybersecurity jargon. When it’s essential, include concise explanations of all the technical terms you’ve used.
Back up your claims with evidence-based reporting
For stakeholders to take your cybersecurity reports and recommended mitigations seriously, they must be grounded on verifiable evidence. Include a list of data sources that were referenced to build your report, and be ready to provide a copy of each source if requested.
Evidence-based reporting will give your cybersecurity report the credibility to be taken seriously by the board.Offer actionable recommendations
A cybersecurity report is useless to senior management if it lists identified cyber and compliance risks. Each listed risk should be supported with concrete responses that will directly impact the organization’s security posture. To ensure you communicate remediation suggestions with the greatest impact, utilize a tool like UpGuard to project how security postures will be affected by selected remediation tasks.
Remediation affect projections on the Cybersecurity platform.
