How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk

Praise for HOW TO MEASURE ANYTHING IN CYBERSECURITY RISK

"I am excited to see a new method of risk management emerging from this book. Shifting from purely qualitative judgments and simplifications to a proven quantitative model that leverages measurements and the expertise of security professionals holds the promise for dramatically shifting how we manage cyber risk."
Patrick Heim, head of Trust & Security, Dropbox; former chief trust officer, Salesforce.com

"A refreshing voice of reason in cybersecurity risk management. Richard and Douglas successfully rise above noisy security best practices and flashy methods; practitioners have a lot to gain from the clarity within this book′s pages."
Vinnie Liu, partner at Bishop Fox; author of Hacking Exposed; former NSA

"Cybersecurity has become one the biggest risks facing companies today. There is a need to provide the tools and information for a CISO to become more of a chief information risk officer so they are better able to identify and prioritize risk, allocate resources, and develop effective risk mitigation strategies. This book helps to fill that need."
Steve Katz, the first CISO

"At a time when forecasts tell you a great deal about the forecaster but nothing about the future, comes a practical guide for capturing and articulating risk in the board room with great success."
Tim McKnight, CISO, GE; former CISO, Fidelity

Foreword Stuart McClure xi

Acknowledgments xiii

About the Authors xv

Introduction 1

PART I WHY CYBERSECURITY NEEDS BETTER MEASUREMENTS FOR RISK 5

CHAPTER 1 The One Patch Most Needed in Cybersecurity 7

CHAPTER 2 A Measurement Primer for Cybersecurity 19

CHAPTER 3 Model Now!: An Introduction to Practical Quantitative Methods for Cybersecurity 35

CHAPTER 4 The Single Most Important Measurement in Cybersecurity 55

CHAPTER 5 Risk Matrices, Lie Factors, Misconceptions, and Other Obstacles to Measuring Risk 81

PART II EVOLVING THE MODEL OF CYBERSECURITY RISK 111

CHAPTER 6 Decompose It: Unpacking the Details 113

CHAPTER 7 Calibrated Estimates: How Much Do You Know Now ? 133

CHAPTER 8 Reducing Uncertainty with Bayesian Methods 157

CHAPTER 9 Some Powerful Methods Based on Bayes 169

PART III CYBERSECURITY RISK MANAGEMENT FOR THE ENTERPRISE 197

CHAPTER 10 Toward Security Metrics Maturity 199

CHAPTER 11 How Well Are My Security Investments Working Together? 213

CHAPTER 12 A Call to Action: How to Roll Out Cybersecurity Risk Management 229

APPENDIX A Select Distributions 239

APPENDIX B Guest Contributors 247

Index 269

DOUGLAS W. HUBBARD is the inventor of Applied Information Economics (AIE), an internationally recognized expert in measurement and quantitative decision analysis, and best–selling author of How to Measure Anything, Third Edition, and The Failure of Risk Management.

RICHARD SEIERSEN is general manager of Cyber Security & Privacy at GE Healthcare. He has more than twenty years of experience in such areas as cybersecurity; governance, risk and compliance (GRC); and analytics.