Now that cybersecurity threats have become more plentiful and severe than ever such as in IoT applications, it is becoming harder for cybersecurity professionals to justify the cost of investment into cybersecurity to the decision makers of an organization.

Since cyber-attacks are almost inevitable on IoT and that impenetrable protection is presently out of the realm of possibility, significant investing in cybersecurity almost feels pointless for many organizations. Let’s have a look at how organizations can optimize investment to minimize cyber exposure, as well as inspect some problems they may encounter on the way:

Cybersecurity solutions are continually evolving and changing their approach to finding ways to ensure that an organization’s assets are kept safe from cybercriminals. Unfortunately, the threats developed as well, making it more difficult for traditional perimeter-focused solutions to keep cybercriminals out. That is why IoT cybersecurity professionals have been facing a lot of pressure to come up with more efficient protection.

However, considering that risk elimination has become an impossible mission, it’s crucial for everyone in charge of cybersecurity to change their mindset and focus more on risk management. In other words, we can have effective cybersecurity that doesn’t focus solely on preventing impact, but also on minimizing it and managing risks that are inherent to the cyber environment.

The part where organizations might struggle with optimizing investment is determining whether their existing cybersecurity policies, procedures and mechanisms cover them or their technology well enough, as well as whether they need to invest more. That takes some careful analysis and assessment of the protocols that are already in place.

These processes tend only to provide vague ideas, such as whether it would pay off to have cybersecurity insurance in case of a breach in addition to cybersecurity aimed at preventing breaches. For organizations that need to come up with exact numbers, it’s advisable to work on determining where the positive impact of insurance and cybersecurity in general is. One way of doing that is by developing different potential cyber loss scenarios.

They need to be specific to the organization, type of IoT products and operational environment, and it’s vital for the different department's involvement for the organization to arrive at a correct evaluation of what the costs would be, if it is breached.

Typically, organizations already have all the informational insight they might need to determine what kind of cybersecurity insurance and control systems they should adopt. All it takes is communication between the right stakeholders and cybersecurity professionals to ascertain the potential impact of a cyber-event.

Many organizations already develop loss engineering studies that base on perils that aren’t related to cybersecurity — but these perils, such as fires or mechanical malfunctions, might have similar outcomes as breaches. It helps inform their cybersecurity strategy, crunch the numbers and ensure that they aren’t investing too much or too little.

The approach to cybersecurity is changing, and it’s vital for organizations to adjust to the new trends. They will lessen the financial impact of certain cyber events that most every organization will face. Setting up a risk-based IoT Security Assurance Framework and Optimizing investment to minimize cyber exposure is an effective way of ensuring that the IoT products, processes and services are well-protected and covered without overspending.