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.

Risk used to be a word thrown around as if it could be defined generally and, once defined, consistently applied to all business and technology use cases. This didn’t work out so well for customers, CISO’s, or vendors. Risk was a “four-letter-word” and it fell out of common use.

We’ve entered Week #3 of National Supply Chain Integrity Month, an initiative that CISA and other government agencies started to highlight the importance of securing our nation’s most critical systems and ensuring they stay resilient. For Weeks #1 and #2, I wrote about maturing your third-party risk management program and securing the small business supply chain.

When a major security event like SolarWinds or Log4j happens, how do you assess the impact across your third-party supply chain? Most organizations struggle to effectively react to zero day attacks and other critical vulnerabilities at scale, often following manual and cumbersome workflows. But our latest capability is here to change that.

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.

Running a business is full of surprises. Unexpected events can pop up at any time, potentially leading to the derailment of your organization’s goals. If everything suddenly went haywire, would you and your team know what to do in the heat of the moment? That’s precisely why having a robust risk management program is crucial, and it all starts with a risk register – a tool used to identify and mitigate potential problems.