The impacts of Reactive -vs- Proactive cyber security is very real!

Reactive -vs- Proactive; is there really a benefit to business? After correlating years worth of industry data the business and consumer impacts are quite clear but illustrating this information is difficult. We have created this infographic to help you make the business case for being proactive about security. After all … Lazarus Alliance is Proactive Cyber Security®!

What should be painfully obvious is that by taking proactive steps you avoid about 96% of all breach potential. While there is no such thing as a perfect solution you will be significantly less susceptible to cyber crime and not as likely to be in a reactive response.

While holistic governance in security, privacy, risk and cyber-law is increasingly complex and you are charged with delivering GRC guidance to your organization that they understand. The security industry has been conditioned to accept the “inevitable breach” and engage a reactive incident response plan. We have changed that paradigm in part with ITAM. The IT Audit Machine gives you everything you need to succeed. The Americas, Europe, Asia, MENA or wherever strong IT security policies and holistic GRC is needed and we deliver the foundation your company needs.

Why should only big business be able to afford world class technology security executive representation? You retain attorneys and accountants to perform complex tasks and represent you; retain technology security executive services and subject matter experts just the same!

Lazarus Alliance brings internationally recognized expert technology security executives to work for you. Your Personal CXO ® is the global hot-spot for retaining the services of the best and brightest subject matter experts in Cyberspace Law, IT Security and operations, IT Risk and Governance, Compliance, Policy and more!

Our clients range range from start-ups on up to multinational corporations from all business sectors from all around the world. We can help your organization too! If your company depends on technology for the success of your business; and what company does not in our technically connected global business community? You need qualified proactive cyber security assistance to implement effective controls and countermeasures.

Lazarus Alliance Cybervisors® are here to help!

The alternative may be that your company is on the next industry breach report and you are stepping down from your position because you could have done more to protect your company.

How do you quantify the true cost of a data breach? How do you measure the costs against the benefits of eliminating risks, mitigating risks or accepting risks to your business effectively?

The Lazarus Alliance executive leadership team has been the proverbial tip of the spear within the proactive cyber security realm well before there were actually corporate security departments and before the role of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) entered our collective taxonomy.

It seemed only logical when you think like a futurist that our technological proliferation would only accelerate (it certainly has!) and that cyber security would predominantly factor into this equation (the understatement for the day!).

As with any analytical pursuit, the more data you have to analyze the better the outcome will be. Measuring the cost of a data breach is no exception to this rule. The cyber security industry and the practitioners within it now have ample data sets to draw from. The big task that remains is really a question (actually several but who is counting?) again and they are whether or not the security leadership within your organization has the:

1. The competency to do the job
2. The capability to do the job
3. The fortitude to do the job

Therein lies the wildcard. The human element once again is the weakest link in the chain between absolute cyber security and the lack thereof. It is important to point out that the first rule in the laws of security are that there is no such thing as absolute cyber security unless you cut the cord.

Now that we are at a place that resembles despair, let’s examine some facts that will help corporate leadership beginning with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) down through the corporate ranks. It behooves us to distill the many facets of cyber security into the most obvious and most simplest of forms; proactive cyber security and reactive cyber security.

Reactive Cyber Security

By definition, reactive cyber security is when it’s too late for preventive measures. You company is in the news and on the next industry breach report. The CEO, CIO and CISO are most likely going to be on the head chopping block. If your company survives, there will be huge litigation costs and long term reputation damage that is almost impossible to quantify.

Depending on what breach statistical report you choose, on average the cost of a singular human database record is $205 USD. Using some very complex mathematics (A*B=C) we can estimate the costs of a data breach which will help us make decisions on how to be proactive in the pursuit of risk elimination to our organizations.

For example, recently published on CNN was “Government investigators now believe that the data theft from the Office of Personnel Management computer systems compromised sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, of roughly 21.5 million people from both inside and outside the government, the government announced Thursday.”

Let’s do the math!

$205.00 multiplied by 21,500,000 records equals the estimated cost of the Office of Personnel Management data breach is going to be $4,407,500,000.00! (Expletives omitted at this point!)

What are some additional ancillary costs of this breach:

1. The Office of Personnel Management will never be trusted again
2. The CIO and CISO should lose their jobs in utter disgrace due to their egregious negligence
3. The US taxpayers will be strapped with the costs for decades

We have some eye popping and sleep losing facts to take away from this data that we can apply to the organizations we are responsible for. You should have a reasonable idea of how many records you are the custodian of so use this information to calculate another mathematical decision making tool; annualized loss expectancy (ALE).

ALE is an integral part of a proactive risk assessment so lets move on to proactive measures; more on ALE in a moment.

Proactive Cyber Security

By definition, proactive cyber security is all about preventing a data breach through the effective and appropriate implementation of controls and countermeasures. It’s all about keeping your company out of the news and off those industry breach reports.

Think about what it costs to have a third part risk assessment or compliance audit. From a holistic perspective it is trivial when compared to the cost of a data breach. The numbers don’t lie. Taking a proactive approach to cyber security is far less expensive on order of magnitudes. What we are finding is that the cost on average to proactively address security, risk, audit and governance is less than the cost of a single CISO level employee!

To quote William Ochs, a partner in the Lazarus Alliance GRC practice, “With every successive breach we continue to see that organizations miss the adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It seems that in the complexity of cyber security, the most common sense proactive steps are ignored and we keep paying by the pound.”

The best place to begin is with an IT Risk Assessment. Properly conducted, and surveys indicate that 59% of all organizations do not, would eliminate most threats to the business. Quite specifically when you analyze the big breaches over the past 12 months you will find that 100% are attributed to human hacking and 96% could have been prevented by implementing simple and medium grade controls. All of these are easily identified through a proper risk assessment.

Part of every risk assessment includes calculating costs and expenses to eliminate risks which is finally where ALE comes in. While ALE was originally meant for accountants only, the executive leadership of Lazarus Alliance discovered that it made perfect sense for cost center lines of business like cyber security.

To provide a brief explanation of how it is calculated, there are two factors that comprise the ALE. They are the Single Loss Expectancy (SLE), which is the percentage of the asset you are attempting to protect that would be lost in a single exposure, and the Annualized Rate of Occurrence (ARO), which is the frequency the loss event occurs in a year. Those two factors multiplied together give you’re the ALE (ALE = SLE * ARO).

For example, suppose than an asset is valued at $200,000 and the single cost of exposure is $50,000. Your SLE is now defined as $50,000 right? How many times in a year do we expect this exposure event to occur in a year? If we expect an exposure to occur once every year, then ARO is 100% whereas if we think there is a 50/50 shot, our ARO is now 50% right? For discussion purposes, let’s suggest we think there is a 50/50 chance an exposure might occur so our ARO is .5. With our SLE equaling $50,000, multiplied by our ARO of .5, the ALE is $25,000.

If you were to spend more than $25,000 for risk mitigation or avoidance by purchasing some security product, insurance or some legal service, you are spending too much. You are most certainly spending too much if the product or service you deploy does not eliminate the risk. If spending $25,000 does not set your ARO to zero, but say, cuts the risk down by 75% instead, you should reduce that $25,000 mitigation expense by 25% to bring everything back into a cost-effective risk avoidance measure.

We have explored the wildly different costs between proactive cyber security and reactive cyber security. Companies can no longer afford to go-it-alone when the stakes are so high. It’s not enough for the government or the private sector to enact rules and regulations; you need qualified assistance to make it happen.

Lazarus Alliance is Proactive Cyber Security®

We are excited that you are interested in this Lazarus Alliance Employment Opportunity. Please review these position highlights and complete the form below to initiate your consideration for employment.

Job Location:

Candidates must be United States citizens and reside within the continental United States to be considered.

Job Responsibilities:

In this position, you will be responsible for conducting IT audits, integrated IT/operations audits, Compliance testing and special projects as assigned. You will lead audits and deliver recommendations that add value to, and improve the efficiency of company operations.

All Lazarus Alliance employees are responsible for assisting in business development.

Responsibilities Include (but are not limited to):

• Plan and perform internal audits to assess control design and effectiveness for information systems and SOX controls testing as outlined in the Annual Internal Audit Plan.
• Supervise Information Systems Internal Audit engagements, as assigned.
• Prepare audit programs, work papers detailing audit procedures, and ensure adequate audit evidence in accordance with departmental and professional standards.
• Communicate audit findings and opportunities for improvement to management.
• Assist the external auditors, as applicable.
• Perform special projects of varying complexity and business focus as directed by Internal Audit Management. Provide IT audit assistance on financial, operational, and integrated audits.
• Act as a department liaison to various PetSmart business functions and committees as determined by Internal Audit Department Management.
• Develop and maintain relationships with various control owners and other constituents throughout the organization.
• Understand and assess the Information Systems (IS) business area objectives, risks and controls to ensure significant risks are identified and appropriate controls are established to reduce risk to an acceptable level.
• Develop and maintain knowledge of emerging professional standards, regulatory initiatives, and IT and retail industry trends and threats.

Education Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Business Administration, or other relevant analytical field.
• Minimum of 3 years experience in IS/IT audit, information security, and/or compliance.

Certification Required: One or more of the following certifications is required:

• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
• Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) (Lazarus Alliance will sponsor QSA certification holders.)
• Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA)
• Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP)
• Certified Internal Auditor (CIA)
• Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)
• Certified Public Accountant (CPA)

General Experience Required:

• Working knowledge of IS/IT Auditing and Internal Auditing concepts.
• Familiarity with some but preferably all of our core assessment frameworks including: PCI DSS, FedRAMP, HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley 404, SSAE 16, ISO 27000, Safe Harbor and CIP NERC standards and compliance requirements.
• Experience with internal control frameworks, professional audit standards, leading practices, security and trust models, and guidelines (e.g. HORSE, COSO, COBIT, NIST, ISO).
• Working knowledge of business management concepts (i.e. objectives, risks, and controls).
• Proven experience documenting and performing a full audit program to completion.
• Good understanding of technologies and controls including those related to OS, database, network, and application security.
• Ability to work effectively with all levels of management (technical and non-technical) and other colleagues, demonstrating strong initiative, mature judgment, professionalism, adaptability, and a customer service orientation.
• Must possess a “can-do” attitude with excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Proactive in researching business best practice concepts in order to apply as appropriate.
• Solid listening skills and ability to identify gaps in logic – inquisitive.
• Strong planning, organization and time management skills.
• Ability to work independently, productively and follow through on all responsibilities to bring projects to a successful conclusion.

Additional Training Provided by Lazarus Alliance:

Candidates will receive training in Lazarus Alliance proprietary technologies and methodologies unique to the industry including:

• The IT Audit Machine®
• The Policy Machine®
• Continuum®
• Your Personal CXO®
• The Security Trifecta®
• HORSE Project wiki®

About Lazarus Alliance:

Lazarus Alliance is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, genetics, and protected veteran status, as well as any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law.

Lazarus Alliance is Proactive Cyber Security®

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