How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk - Hardcover

Hubbard, Douglas W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1119085292 ISBN 13: 9781119085294

Publisher: WILEY, 2016

Synopsis

A ground shaking exposé on the failure of popular cyber risk management methods

How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk exposes the shortcomings of current "risk management" practices, and offers a series of improvement techniques that help you fill the holes and ramp up security. In his bestselling book How to Measure Anything, author Douglas W. Hubbard opened the business world's eyes to the critical need for better measurement. This book expands upon that premise and draws from The Failure of Risk Management to sound the alarm in the cybersecurity realm. Some of the field's premier risk management approaches actually create more risk than they mitigate, and questionable methods have been duplicated across industries and embedded in the products accepted as gospel. This book sheds light on these blatant risks, and provides alternate techniques that can help improve your current situation. You'll also learn which approaches are too risky to save, and are actually more damaging than a total lack of any security. 

Dangerous risk management methods abound; there is no industry more critically in need of solutions than cybersecurity. This book provides solutions where they exist, and advises when to change tracks entirely.

• Discover the shortcomings of cybersecurity's "best practices"
• Learn which risk management approaches actually create risk
• Improve your current practices with practical alterations
• Learn which methods are beyond saving, and worse than doing nothing

Insightful and enlightening, this book will inspire a closer examination of your company's own risk management practices in the context of cybersecurity. The end goal is airtight data protection, so finding cracks in the vault is a positive thing―as long as you get there before the bad guys do. How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk is your guide to more robust protection through better quantitative processes, approaches, and techniques.

About this title

About the Author

DOUGLAS W. HUBBARD is the inventor of Applied Information Economics (AIE), an internationally recognized expert in measurement and quantitative decision analysis, and best-selling author of How to Measure Anything, Third Edition, and The Failure of Risk Management.

RICHARD SEIERSEN is general manager of Cyber Security & Privacy at GE Healthcare. He has more than twenty years of experience in such areas as cybersecurity; governance, risk and compliance (GRC); and analytics.

From the Back Cover

Praise for How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk

"I am excited to see a new method of risk management emerging from this book. Shifting from purely qualitative judgments and simplifications to a proven quantitative model that leverages measurements and the expertise of security professionals holds the promise for dramatically shifting how we manage cyber risk."
Patrick Heim, head of Trust & Security, Dropbox; former chief trust officer, Salesforce.com

"A refreshing voice of reason in cybersecurity risk management. Richard and Douglas successfully rise above noisy security best practices and flashy methods; practitioners have a lot to gain from the clarity within this book's pages."
Vinnie Liu, partner at Bishop Fox; author of Hacking Exposed; former NSA

"Cybersecurity has become one of the biggest risks facing companies today. There is a need to provide the tools and information for a CISO to become more of a chief information risk officer so they are better able to identify and prioritize risk, allocate resources, and develop effective risk mitigation strategies. This book helps to fill that need."
Steve Katz, the first CISO

"At a time when forecasts tell you a great deal about the forecaster but nothing about the future, comes a practical guide for capturing and articulating risk in the board room with great success."
Tim McKnight, CISO, GE; former CISO, Fidelity

From the Inside Flap

What if your single biggest cybersecurity risk was the risk assessment method itself? Even if your approach to assessing this critical risk makes you feel more confident about your decisions, you may actually be making things worse. How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk presents real solutions by skillfully applying the quantitative language of risk analysis to information security.

As with his previous How to Measure Anything books, measurement expert Douglas Hubbard simplifies the complexity of quantifying uncertainty and sheds light on matters with little data or seemingly intangible goals and here he taps cybersecurity influencer Richard Seiersen to dispel long-held beliefs about cybersecurity practices and provide authoritative guidance to solving problems by measuring risk. Together, they debunk popular risk scores and risk matrices and replace them with scientifically proven, yet practical, quantitative methods.

Immediately useful, this practical guide offers an easy path to better risk assessment by describing a very simple quantitative solution, building on it with more advanced methods, and providing detailed advice for choosing the one for your needs. Regardless of your current understanding of cybersecurity or statistics, everything inside is fully accessible and equips you with a potent collection of strategies and tools from today's top experts in cybersecurity and risk assessment. This complete resource gets you there start to finish by:

• Debunking the most common arguments against using quantitative methods in cybersecurity
• Modeling risk with a variety of simple and advanced techniques for enhancing the usefulness of data in times of great uncertainty using free, downloadable spreadsheets
• Detailing a dependable, organization-wide security metrics maturity model for continuous and measurable improvement

The thought process that goes into making informed decisions with sparse data points, using the described "Lens" method to reduce estimation errors, along with the many other techniques inside, will advance how you run cybersecurity as well as how you measurably improve other types of high-stakes decisions. How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk shows you nothing is immeasurable including your peace of mind.

Edition details

• Publisher: WILEY
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1119085292
• ISBN 13: 9781119085294
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304