Debating a UK Wide Adoption of Cyber Security Metrics

Acumin was hospitality sponsor to the first RANT Forum of 2018 this week in London. The event, sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was designed to open a discussion on the development of an industry standard set of metrics for all private sector organisations to adopt.

Meeting in a basement bar near Bank, 100 information security professionals gathered with a panel of Subject Matter Experts to discuss the potential benefits and pitfalls of such a scheme.

The audience, made up of CISO’s and other senior staff from a range of end user organisations were forthcoming in their experiences, presenting an accurate depiction of their company’s cyber risk to the board.

With the complexity of threats in the business landscape, understanding the accurate level of risk will always be difficult to stakeholders. The benefit to organisations in being able to manage their current level of resource more effectively from improved visibility is a strong case to explore how a ‘health status’ style dashboard could be useful to employers. When considering the skills gap and the difficulty some end user organisations face in securing spend on security products and services, the argument for working on this initiative strengthens.

If the government were to propose a standard, how could this tie in with other regulations such as GDPR and the level of influence regulators have in dealing with cyber-crime as it happens in the private sector?

By reporting on levels of cyber security resilience, a bank of information can be built up to map common vulnerabilities. This over time may be able to increase the influence of government regulators on appropriate actions organisations should take in terms of managing their behaviour.

But in doing this, are organisations at risk of showing a soft underbelly to parties intending on taking advantage?

Further, such events will likely bring more answers (and questions!) to the fore. For the time being, Acumin was grateful to the attendees who were able to make the evening enjoyable and informative.

Acumin’s support of this event is part of a wider commitment to support the development of cyber security initiatives with the UK public sector. RANT Events is a sister company of Acumin and delivers bespoke events exclusively for those working in the cyber security industry in London and across the UK. You can visit their website to hear about the latest events here.