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Cybersecurity Reporting Tools That Will Make Your Life Easier

by Maahnoor Siddiqui on October 27, 2022

The cybersecurity industry has proliferated in the past few years, and as it has grown, so has its value. According to research conducted by Statista, the cybersecurity market is currently worth $159.8 billion and is expected to grow to $345.4 billion by 2026. As the number of cyber and IT businesses, tools, and employees has grown, the volume of cyber attacks on businesses of all shapes and sizes has skyrocketed.

Businesses across the globe feel the effect of cyberattacks and crimes. According to research conducted by Cybersecurity Ventures, the cost of cybercrime reached $6 trillion in 2021, and the damages are estimated to grow to $10 trillion by 2025.

As cybercrime becomes increasingly lucrative, cyber attacks are likely to increase. However, data breaches aren’t just limited to financial losses. They can affect business operations, staff, valuation, reputation, and finances.

Whether sensitive or personal data, companies seek efficient solutions to maintain network security and the confidentiality and security of their data and preserve sovereignty. But how?

Enter cybersecurity reporting tools.

Cybersecurity reporting tools protect enterprises from various kinds of malicious attacks and cybercrimes. Cyber breaches are less of a question of ‘if’ and more of a question of ‘when.’ Cybersecurity risk management strategies need to focus on how well they can proactively manage threats and respond with the help of these tools.

Before we walk you through the reporting tools you need, let’s investigate why it’s crucial to leave behind legacy or spreadsheet systems for tools that utilize automation and are built for this digital age.

Why Don’t Spreadsheets Work?

Data is a valuable asset to any business – it is a part of various roles across the business, including market research, HR, internal sales, and more. However, many companies still use outdated tools such as spreadsheets to communicate and visualize that data. According to a report from the Aberdeen Group, more than 89% of companies use spreadsheets daily.

Though spreadsheets are excellent tools, they aren’t effective conduits for data communication, visualization, and security measures.

Spreadsheets are inefficient and can expose your business to various security risks. They’re modular, incredibly slow, highly expensive, and unable to detect vulnerabilities that cyber criminals and hackers leverage.

Here are a few reasons why many companies worldwide started to see spreadsheets as a bad option:

  •   Manual workflows
  •   Outdated assessments
  •   No standardized reporting
  •   Lack of unified compliance framework
  •   Data silos
  •   Prone to error
  •   Time-consuming
  •   Doesn’t provide data in real-time

Now that you know spreadsheets are ineffective – let’s learn about the five best cybersecurity reporting tools to identify vulnerabilities.

Five Cyber Reporting Tools You Must Use

Below are the five best cybersecurity reporting tools to make your life easier.

Automation

Automation is an effective way to build a unified, comprehensive strategy to handle various cybersecurity risks. This reporting tool lets you streamline risk assessments while providing excellent visibility into security and risk postures.

Risk management and security professionals can collect data through integrations using the right tools that allow real-time reporting, automated scoring, and a risk register. This helps you stay informed about relevant information required to understand prospective and existing risks and protect confidential information.

It enables you to draft an integrated incident response plan, manage real-time instead of point-in-time compliance, and ensure the company adheres to relevant standards or frameworks.

In short, automation helps save a company’s resources and time by reducing the effort and time needed to run projects, do manual handling risk assessments, or update compliance requirements.

Assessment Workflow And Reporting

This reporting tool helps you assess risks and rank them per severity to prioritize risks that need immediate attention and remediation and ones that can be tolerated temporarily until all significant issues are resolved.

Security professionals can effortlessly track maturity and performance using on-demand reporting and track compliance from any customized or industry-standard framework. Additionally, this helps you track compliance and control postures and gaps.

Moreover, the tool provides greater confidence in data and helps you generate predictive analytics with routine information flow.

Also, assessment workflow and reporting help strengthen presentation to stakeholders, promote communication and transparency, and improve cyber investment.

Automated Crosswalking

No matter the niche or industry, companies experience various regulatory changes and a stark rise in vendor security assessment questionnaires. Along with increased security audit requests and reporting expectations, CISOs require real-time visibility in their security and compliance posture through frameworks.

A manual crosswalking project is complex and requires massive time and resources. Plus, it can take hours of mapping and is primarily based on control contents instead of concepts or intentions. Whether performed by an outsourced firm or an internal team, crosswalking is integral to any compliance program.

Want to crosswalk accurately? Choose automated crosswalking.

It helps companies prevent cyberattacks successfully by gaining instant visibility into various compliance postures across standards or frameworks. Move from a traditional (manual) mapping project to automated ones where standards, frameworks, and custom controls are immediately mapped to any other requirement.

Automated crosswalking offers the following benefits:

  •   Near-instant mappings
  •   Unlimited mappings available to perform
  •   Accurately based on contents and intent of controls, not just words

Risk Register

A risk register is a popular tool among cybersecurity professionals and leaders, allowing practitioners to measure and track risks in a centralized place. It provides a way to record identified risks, their severity analysis, and essential management actions.

You won’t be able to watch documented risks change over time, make informed decisions, roll up risks and report them, or visualize and discuss them across your company if you lack a risk register. 

Project teams can use risk registers to improve their cyber security by utilizing efficacy, scope, and compliance.

Listed below are a few advantages of risk registers:

  •   Enterprise-wide view into cyber and IT risk past, present, and future scenarios
  •   Accurately based on real-time data
  •   Model out solutions for lowest risk reduction and largest ROSI
  •   Easily rolled up and reported to nontechnical stakeholders

Real-Time Reports And Dashboards

The importance of KRIs, visualizations, and metrics is increasing exponentially, particularly when assessing solutions to handle cyber risks.

With increased scrutiny from the Board and executive leadership, cyber security real-time reports and dashboards help monitor goals and satisfy various stakeholders from the Board of Directors to C-Suite.

With real-time reports and dashboards, security professionals will get easy-to-understand, informative insights, periodic updates, and reports so they can easily communicate with stakeholders about the current security status, including the cyber risk and compliance posture.

Conclusion

Modern organizations confront various challenges and problems that require careful monitoring, tracking, and evaluating cybersecurity postures to prevent data-loss events. The cybersecurity reporting tools mentioned above help reduce manual intervention and deliver tangible and real ROIs for your company.

Replace age-old legacy tools with an automated, all-in-one solution like CyberStrong to save time, effort, and money. The platform offers all the aforementioned tools and more in a single centralized place. It enables businesses to gain unprecedented visibility, build resilience, and automate compliance. For more information, contact us.

The cybersecurity industry has proliferated in the past few years, and as it has grown, so has its value. According to research conducted by Statista, the cybersecurity market is currently worth $159.8 billion and is expected to grow to $345.4 billion by 2026. As the number of cyber and IT businesses, tools, and employees has grown, the volume of cyber attacks on businesses of all shapes and sizes has skyrocketed.

Businesses across the globe feel the effect of cyberattacks and crimes. According to research conducted by Cybersecurity Ventures, the cost of cybercrime reached $6 trillion in 2021, and the damages are estimated to grow to $10 trillion by 2025.

As cybercrime becomes increasingly lucrative, cyber attacks are likely to increase. However, data breaches aren’t just limited to financial losses. They can affect business operations, staff, valuation, reputation, and finances.

Whether sensitive or personal data, companies seek efficient solutions to maintain network security and the confidentiality and security of their data and preserve sovereignty. But how?

Enter cybersecurity reporting tools.

Cybersecurity reporting tools protect enterprises from various kinds of malicious attacks and cybercrimes. Cyber breaches are less of a question of ‘if’ and more of a question of ‘when.’ Cybersecurity risk management strategies need to focus on how well they can proactively manage threats and respond with the help of these tools.

Before we walk you through the reporting tools you need, let’s investigate why it’s crucial to leave behind legacy or spreadsheet systems for tools that utilize automation and are built for this digital age.

Why Don’t Spreadsheets Work?

Data is a valuable asset to any business – it is a part of various roles across the business, including market research, HR, internal sales, and more. However, many companies still use outdated tools such as spreadsheets to communicate and visualize that data. According to a report from the Aberdeen Group, more than 89% of companies use spreadsheets daily.

Though spreadsheets are excellent tools, they aren’t effective conduits for data communication, visualization, and security measures.

Spreadsheets are inefficient and can expose your business to various security risks. They’re modular, incredibly slow, highly expensive, and unable to detect vulnerabilities that cyber criminals and hackers leverage.

Here are a few reasons why many companies worldwide started to see spreadsheets as a bad option:

  •   Manual workflows
  •   Outdated assessments
  •   No standardized reporting
  •   Lack of unified compliance framework
  •   Data silos
  •   Prone to error
  •   Time-consuming
  •   Doesn’t provide data in real-time

Now that you know spreadsheets are ineffective – let’s learn about the five best cybersecurity reporting tools to identify vulnerabilities.

Five Cyber Reporting Tools You Must Use

Below are the five best cybersecurity reporting tools to make your life easier.

Automation

Automation is an effective way to build a unified, comprehensive strategy to handle various cybersecurity risks. This reporting tool lets you streamline risk assessments while providing excellent visibility into security and risk postures.

Risk management and security professionals can collect data through integrations using the right tools that allow real-time reporting, automated scoring, and a risk register. This helps you stay informed about relevant information required to understand prospective and existing risks and protect confidential information.

It enables you to draft an integrated incident response plan, manage real-time instead of point-in-time compliance, and ensure the company adheres to relevant standards or frameworks.

In short, automation helps save a company’s resources and time by reducing the effort and time needed to run projects, do manual handling risk assessments, or update compliance requirements.

Assessment Workflow And Reporting

This reporting tool helps you assess risks and rank them per severity to prioritize risks that need immediate attention and remediation and ones that can be tolerated temporarily until all significant issues are resolved.

Security professionals can effortlessly track maturity and performance using on-demand reporting and track compliance from any customized or industry-standard framework. Additionally, this helps you track compliance and control postures and gaps.

Moreover, the tool provides greater confidence in data and helps you generate predictive analytics with routine information flow.

Also, assessment workflow and reporting help strengthen presentation to stakeholders, promote communication and transparency, and improve cyber investment.

Automated Crosswalking

No matter the niche or industry, companies experience various regulatory changes and a stark rise in vendor security assessment questionnaires. Along with increased security audit requests and reporting expectations, CISOs require real-time visibility in their security and compliance posture through frameworks.

A manual crosswalking project is complex and requires massive time and resources. Plus, it can take hours of mapping and is primarily based on control contents instead of concepts or intentions. Whether performed by an outsourced firm or an internal team, crosswalking is integral to any compliance program.

Want to crosswalk accurately? Choose automated crosswalking.

It helps companies prevent cyberattacks successfully by gaining instant visibility into various compliance postures across standards or frameworks. Move from a traditional (manual) mapping project to automated ones where standards, frameworks, and custom controls are immediately mapped to any other requirement.

Automated crosswalking offers the following benefits:

  •   Near-instant mappings
  •   Unlimited mappings available to perform
  •   Accurately based on contents and intent of controls, not just words

Risk Register

A risk register is a popular tool among cybersecurity professionals and leaders, allowing practitioners to measure and track risks in a centralized place. It provides a way to record identified risks, their severity analysis, and essential management actions.

You won’t be able to watch documented risks change over time, make informed decisions, roll up risks and report them, or visualize and discuss them across your company if you lack a risk register. 

Project teams can use risk registers to improve their cyber security by utilizing efficacy, scope, and compliance.

Listed below are a few advantages of risk registers:

  •   Enterprise-wide view into cyber and IT risk past, present, and future scenarios
  •   Accurately based on real-time data
  •   Model out solutions for lowest risk reduction and largest ROSI
  •   Easily rolled up and reported to nontechnical stakeholders

Real-Time Reports And Dashboards

The importance of KRIs, visualizations, and metrics is increasing exponentially, particularly when assessing solutions to handle cyber risks.

With increased scrutiny from the Board and executive leadership, cyber security real-time reports and dashboards help monitor goals and satisfy various stakeholders from the Board of Directors to C-Suite.

With real-time reports and dashboards, security professionals will get easy-to-understand, informative insights, periodic updates, and reports so they can easily communicate with stakeholders about the current security status, including the cyber risk and compliance posture.

Conclusion

Modern organizations confront various challenges and problems that require careful monitoring, tracking, and evaluating cybersecurity postures to prevent data-loss events. The cybersecurity reporting tools mentioned above help reduce manual intervention and deliver tangible and real ROIs for your company.

Replace age-old legacy tools with an automated, all-in-one solution like CyberStrong to save time, effort, and money. The platform offers all the aforementioned tools and more in a single centralized place. It enables businesses to gain unprecedented visibility, build resilience, and automate compliance. For more information, contact us.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from CyberSaint Blog authored by Maahnoor Siddiqui. Read the original post at: https://www.cybersaint.io/blog/cybersecurity-reporting-tools-that-will-make-your-life-easier

Maahnoor Siddiqui ,