Security Metrics That Answer Board Questions
Effective communication between security teams, boards, and other functional departments is essential in preventing communication gaps. CISOs must break down complex security information into simple, meaningful metrics and communicate tailored messages to technical teams, peers, and boards.
Boards often ask questions that link security investments to impact on risk levels, highlighting the importance of demonstrating security's value to the business. However, the data typically provided by security teams doesn't answer these questions, leaving CISOs struggling to explain the value of their investments and teams.
Bridging the Communication Gap
To demonstrate security's value to the business, CISOs should focus on metrics that span people, process, and technology, which help business leaders better understand the state of their security program and how to improve it. These metrics are also essential for CISOs to demonstrate risk, ROI, and a roadmap for maturity and investment to justify necessary budget.
In this easy-to-consume chart, we list common questions from business leaders to security experts and which metrics will provide the clearest answers to those questions, including:
- MITRE ATT&CK coverage
- Log source coverage and diversity
- Mean time to resolve (MTTR)
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