How to Measure Your Risk Monitoring Activities
This article was originally featured in ASIS International
Ideally, businesses should use data to inform and contextualize their most important decisions, both inside and outside the security function. But obtaining accurate data to measure the value and effectiveness of security services such as risk monitoring or threat mitigation—which can be inherently less tangible—is often much more complex than a simple profit or loss calculation.
Well-designed and implemented security programs typically aim to be seamless and invisible, preventing and mitigating threats so well that many in the organization don’t realize a risk was present. But when success means nothing happened, how can security teams better measure and articulate the effectiveness of their programs? Even though most security programs can’t easily tie their contributions to a dollar value, that doesn’t mean those programs aren’t making direct and significant contributions to the business, or that metrics don’t exist to show that impact.
There are several ways to measure the effectiveness of your security programs, helping to demonstrate your team’s successes while also highlighting gaps that need to be filled in resources and personnel to ensure the security program can continue to support the organization’s growth and contribute to its goals. Perhaps most importantly, defining and measuring these benchmarks can provide a foundation to prepare the security team and the larger organization for emerging risks and the future threat environment.
For the complete article, check out ASIS International
