A recent study found that financially material cyber attacks are increasing in frequency and that the top 5% of such attacks lead to an average $52M in losses. As these types of cyber attacks become more frequent and more severe, it has become increasingly critical for risk managers outside of enterprise security functions —such as compliance and credit officers—to consider cybersecurity risk in their assessment of customers, suppliers and investments.

Today we are announcing updates to the Bitsight ratings algorithm. Bitsight is committed to creating the most meaningful, trustworthy, and actionable security ratings and analytics in the marketplace. As part of this commitment, we periodically make updates to our ratings algorithm based on new data observations and capabilities, internal and external research, and market feedback. For this year’s update, we have made several adjustments, including modifying the weights of several risk vectors.

In 2011, Bitsight invented the security ratings industry. As the market leader, we are still the standard in how organizations quantify, manage, and monitor cyber risk. Today, that universal metric is used by entities from national governments to global enterprises to Fortune 500 companies to interpret cyber risk. And now, we’re disrupting the industry once again. Waves of change are constantly disrupting companies of all sizes around the world, particularly when it comes to cybersecurity.

The cybersecurity threat landscape is rapidly evolving as cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile devices, and remote work become more widely adopted. As a result, Security Operations Center (SOC) teams are increasingly overwhelmed. In addition to responding to cyber threats, teams must continuously identify emerging vulnerabilities and move quickly to apply and test patches and updates. A failure to do so significantly increases cyber risk. Consider the statistics.

In response to the growing number of cyber incidents, policymakers and regulators around the world are creating new cybersecurity requirements for companies to comply with, including mandates to disclose cyber risks and incidents. For example, new cyber risk disclosure requirements from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are anticipated to be adopted in 2023 and would have a major impact on corporate cybersecurity initiatives.

With the rise of remote work and shadow IT, more devices and apps (both sanctioned and unsanctioned) are connecting to your organization’s network. Today, there are approximately five million mobile apps currently in circulation: approximately three million for Android and two million for iOS. That’s great for productivity, but less than ideal when it comes to security.

If you operate in specific sectors, cybersecurity maturity is more than a best practice, it’s a regulatory requirement. These regulations are complex and constantly changing. To help you better understand your organization's regulatory environment and the standards and controls they stipulate, let's break down key cyber compliance regulations by industry.

Are you aware of the risks involved in doing business with parties sanctioned by the Office of Financial Assets Control (OFAC)? How does this impact your vendor management? OFAC stands for Office of Foreign Assets Control within the Treasury Department. As part of the U.S. government measure to enforce anti-money laundering/counter terrorism financing regulations, OFAC oversees economic and trade sanctions. These sanctions are against countries, individuals, or outfits engaged in disreputable actions.

In today’s ever changing cyber risk landscape, your organization must adopt a vulnerability management framework to control exposure and remediate risks in a timely manner. In an earlier blog, we explained the vulnerability management process. Here, we explore a key part of that process – vulnerability monitoring – in greater depth.

The threat of ransomware has been ever present in 2020, especially within the high-stakes industries like healthcare and those involved in the election. According to Verizon's 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, 24% of security incidents that involved specific malware functionality exhibited ransomware functionality.