How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk

How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk

by Douglas W. Hubbard, Richard Seiersen, Daniel E. Geer Jr., Stuart McClure
Released July 2016
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9781119085294

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Book description

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.

Table of contents

  1. Foreword
    1. Note
  2. Foreword
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. About the Authors
  5. Introduction
    1. Why This Book, Why Now?
    2. What Is This Book About?
    3. What to Expect
    4. Is This Book for Me?
    5. We Need More Than Technology
    6. New Tools for Decision Makers
    7. Our Path Forward
  6. PART I: Why Cybersecurity Needs Better Measurements for Risk
    1. Chapter 1: The One Patch Most Needed in Cybersecurity
      1. The Global Attack Surface
      2. The Cyber Threat Response
      3. A Proposal for Cybersecurity Risk Management
      4. Notes
    2. Chapter 2: A Measurement Primer for Cybersecurity
      1. The Concept of Measurement
      2. The Object of Measurement
      3. The Methods of Measurement
      4. Notes
    3. Chapter 3: Model Now!: An Introduction to Practical Quantitative Methods for Cybersecurity
      1. A Simple One-for-One Substitution
      2. The Expert as the Instrument
      3. Doing “Uncertainty Math”
      4. Visualizing Risk
      5. Supporting the Decision: A Return on Mitigation
      6. Where to Go from Here
      7. Notes
    4. Chapter 4: The Single Most Important Measurement in Cybersecurity
      1. The Analysis Placebo: Why We Can’t Trust Opinion Alone
      2. How You Have More Data Than You Think
      3. When Algorithms Beat Experts
      4. Tools for Improving the Human Component
      5. Summary and Next Steps
      6. Notes
    5. Chapter 5: Risk Matrices, Lie Factors, Misconceptions, and Other Obstacles to Measuring Risk
      1. Scanning the Landscape: A Survey of Cybersecurity Professionals
      2. What Color Is Your Risk? The Ubiquitous—and Risky—Risk Matrix
      3. Exsupero Ursus and Other Fallacies
      4. Conclusion
      5. Notes
  7. PART II: Evolving the Model of Cybersecurity Risk
    1. Chapter 6: Decompose It: Unpacking the Details
      1. Decomposing the Simple One-for-One Substitution Model
      2. More Decomposition Guidelines: Clear, Observable, Useful
      3. A Hard Decomposition: Reputation Damage
      4. Conclusion
      5. Notes
    2. Chapter 7: Calibrated Estimates: How Much Do You Know Now?
      1. Introduction to Subjective Probability
      2. Calibration Exercise
      3. Further Improvements on Calibration
      4. Conceptual Obstacles to Calibration
      5. The Effects of Calibration
      6. Notes
      7. Answers to Trivia Questions for Calibration Exercise
    3. Chapter 8: Reducing Uncertainty with Bayesian Methods
      1. A Major Data Breach Example
      2. A Brief Introduction to Bayes and Probability Theory
      3. Bayes Applied to the Cloud Breach Use Case
      4. Note
    4. Chapter 9: Some Powerful Methods Based on Bayes
      1. Computing Frequencies with (Very) Few Data Points: The Beta Distribution
      2. Decomposing Probabilities with Many Conditions
      3. Reducing Uncertainty Further and When To Do It
      4. Leveraging Existing Resources to Reduce Uncertainty
      5. Wrapping Up Bayes
      6. Notes
  8. PART III: Cybersecurity Risk Management for the Enterprise
    1. Chapter 10: Toward Security Metrics Maturity
      1. Introduction: Operational Security Metrics Maturity Model
      2. Sparse Data Analytics
      3. Functional Security Metrics
      4. Security Data Marts
      5. Prescriptive Analytics
      6. Notes
    2. Chapter 11: How Well Are My Security Investments Working Together?
      1. Addressing BI Concerns
      2. Just the Facts: What Is Dimensional Modeling and Why Do I Need It?
      3. Dimensional Modeling Use Case: Advanced Data Stealing Threats
      4. Modeling People Processes
    3. Chapter 12: A Call to Action: How to Roll Out Cybersecurity Risk Management
      1. Establishing the CSRM Strategic Charter
      2. Organizational Roles and Responsibilities for CSRM
      3. Getting Audit to Audit
      4. What the Cybersecurity Ecosystem Must Do to Support You
      5. Can We Avoid the Big One?
  9. Appendix A: Selected Distributions
    1. Distribution Name: Triangular
    2. Distribution Name: Binary
    3. Distribution Name: Normal
    4. Distribution Name: Lognormal
    5. Distribution Name: Beta
    6. Distribution Name: Power Law
    7. Distribution Name: Truncated Power Law
  10. Appendix B: Guest Contributors
    1. Appendix B Contents
    2. Aggregating Data Sources for Cyber Insights
    3. Forecasting—and Reducing—Occurrence of Espionage Attacks
    4. Skyrocketing Breaches?
    5. Financial Impact of Breaches
    6. The Flaw of Averages in Cyber Security
    7. Botnets
    8. Password Hacking
    9. Cyber-CI
    10. How Catastrophe Modeling Can Be Applied to Cyber Risk
    11. Notes
  11. Index
  12. EULA

Product information

  • Title: How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk
  • Author(s): Douglas W. Hubbard, Richard Seiersen, Daniel E. Geer Jr., Stuart McClure
  • Release date: July 2016
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9781119085294