Effective Management Strategy for Handling Digital Risks

You may have efficient cyber security measures in place to safeguard your software solution. But do you really think this is enough to make the digital data of your company secure?

Well, it’s time to come out of this illusion, as these common practices are not enough to put off a crisis-inducing error or a data leakage event.

No doubt, the digitization has resulted in rapid customer scaling, reduced operational costs and revenue growth. However, there are always two sides to a coin. Digitization has also opened the flood gates to new and critical security threats like privacy breaches, hacks and cyber threats. Therefore, the need for more efficient digital risk management like advanced expertise, real-time monitoring and strategic information architecture has emerged. It is important to understand that digital risk management extends beyond cyber security and cyber security is just one element of the comprehensive strategy.

Digital Risk Management

Digital risk management is a complex and critical process that requires real-time monitoring of strategic information architecture. Here are four important pillars associated with digital risk management. It can be defined as the integrated management of digital risks associated with business components like cloud, social and big data.

Data Loss Prevention
This implies the measures to safeguard against system failure, accidental overwriting and deletion and system corruption.

Cyber Security

Cyber security involves the protocols to protect against breaches and incident management to prevent exploitation.

Data Leakage Prevention

This is the security measure against the leakage of confidential data outside of the organizational network.

Governance

Governance includes procedures and policies in accordance to regulation, compliance, obligation, client contractual needs and data custodianship.

Conduct Cross-Functional Reviews

As per the report of Online Trust Alliance, 90% of the data breaches that occurred in 2014 were a result of human error and poorly designed workflows. It could have been prevented with appropriate digital risk management strategies and policies. Digital evaluation is usually conducted by non-engineers in traditional enterprises with no checks and balances to ensure that digital risk is being properly managed. Independent assessment is crucial for every organization to achieve digital risk transparency. Accurate and timely report of potential risk factors can prevent several digital threats that come along the way.

Manage Cyber Security In layers

According to Gartner, the inability to manage digital risk can cause 60 percent of digital businesses to suffer from major service failures. The recent incidence of WannaCry ransomware attack is a stark reminder how harshly the cyber threat can impact the organizations if not managed effectively. The attack brought many organizations to their knees and caused global chaos. Hence, it is essential to enforce the cyber security by managing it in layers. Techniques like bow-tie analysis can be used to detect, prevent and mitigate controls to guard against cyber risk.

Data Deletion Schedules

Sometimes, organizations just hold on to data because they think it can be beneficial in the future. In the end, too much data brings unannounced risks and it usually turns out that the data they require later is hardly ever 2% of all the unorganized data they save. So, it is important to have a good data deletion and retention schedule to lower the risks associated with the data that adds no value to your business.

Regular Assessment of Security Measures
No matter how powerful your security measures you are; regular assessment of those measures is crucial to intercept any looming security threat. Therefore, security technologies and methods should be implemented in every layer of the company.

Digital technologies like AI enable companies to retain more data than ever before. Although there are significant benefits of doing so, you must protect your digital infrastructure and data against the digital threats. Put the above digital risk management strategy to practice and you’ll be able to safeguard your business against the threats of the digital age.