You know the risk of a cyber incident when it comes to finances or operations. But what happens if your company’s reputation suffers?
A cyber incident can impact your organization in many ways, including financially and operationally. But there’s another impact that companies are concerned about — reputational risk management.
What is reputational risk management?
Reputational risk management is the process of avoiding or mitigating the potential loss of an organization’s character or good name. It’s something more senior executives — from Board members and those on the executive management team down to the CIO and CISO — are increasingly concerned about. And rightfully so! All these individuals want to know their organizations are doing everything they can to avoid a cyber incident that could cause long-term reputational damage.
How cybersecurity and reputational risk management intersect
To mitigate against the risk of a data breach, it’s critical that you continuously monitor your digital ecosystem so you can quickly identify and remediate security incidents as they occur — helping you to prevent reputation-ruining events.
Continuous monitoring programs are powerful tools for doing this. By managing and measuring your cybersecurity performance and that of your third parties in real-time, you can reduce potential reputational risk.
Why your reputational risk management strategy must include continuous monitoring
Below are four benefits of using continuous monitoring as part of your reputational risk management strategy:
1. It protects shareholder value
Employing ongoing cybersecurity monitoring practices can help reduce the risk of a cyber event that could drive down your share price, lead to loss of revenue, or affect your ability to win new business.
2. It protects company value
If your company plans to go public or enter into M&A activity, a robust cyber risk management program may drive up the value of your business.
3. It ensures competitive differentiation
Organizations are always looking for a competitive advantage over their peers and competitors. If your company’s reputation is damaged by a cyber event, prospective customers will wonder if you can keep their confidential data safe and secure. Your competitors will also act, touting their strong cybersecurity monitoring practices.
4. It lowers third-party risk
It’s imperative that you monitor any vendors with access to your network or critical information. An incident affecting a trusted third party could certainly impact your organization and cause you reputational damage.
Going beyond messaging with security ratings
Managing the backlash from a security incident is important, but messaging won’t negate the reputational impact. Proper reputational risk management requires continuously monitoring the cybersecurity posture of your own organization and your third parties.
BitSight Security Ratings make this process simple by empowering you to set up automatic alerts when your security posture or that of your vendors changes. With this insight, you can quickly mitigate security vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit and work to prevent any negative impact to your organization’s reputation.
Download this guide to explore how monitoring security performance can be a powerful tool against reputational harm.
