Security metrics provide organizations with a way to measure the effectiveness of their cybersecurity program and help them prepare to secure their digital infrastructure and sensitive data. In this article, we’ll explore the importance of adopting a data-driven approach to identify security weaknesses, assess levels of risk, and improve decision-making. We’ll then examine seven metrics that can help security teams better understand the current state of their cybersecurity defenses, prioritize investments, and build resilience against rapidly evolving threats.
Why Track Security Metrics?
Monitoring and quantifying key security indicators empowers organizations with valuable information about the overall strength of their cybersecurity program, vulnerabilities, and how resources are being used to protect digital infrastructure and data. Here are four ways that tracking security metrics helps organizations build and maintain strong and resilient cybersecurity defenses.Â
Objective assessment and performance monitoring
Tracking metrics related to the impact of current security measures and performance provides an objective view into the state of a business’s cybersecurity program. Tracking progress toward key benchmarks highlights areas of strength and weakness, helping decision-makers pinpoint areas that need improvement and evaluate the effectiveness of current security measures.
Risk management
Security metrics help organizations identify and prioritize risks by quantifying the likelihood and effect of each potential threat. This allows them to focus their efforts and resources on mitigating the most significant risks and addressing vulnerabilities that pose the greatest possible harm.
Compliance and reporting
Many businesses must operate within industry and government regulatory frameworks. These regulations require organizations to uphold specific cybersecurity standards and document how their security practices maintain them. One example is the Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks, which set a baseline for organizations to protect their IT systems and data from cyberattacks. Auditors look at how well a company adheres to standards such as CIS. Compliance tracking and reporting furnishes evidence that they are in compliance with accepted standards.
Resource allocation
Tracking relevant security metrics supports informed decision-making and resource allocation. Organizations can use these insights to identify gaps and determine where additional investment will likely be the most beneficial.
Stakeholder engagement
Security metrics provide security professionals a way to communicate with stakeholders in concrete, easy-to-understand terms. When engaging with top executives, board members, or customers, metrics are useful for explaining the significance of cybersecurity initiatives, charting progress, developing trust, and fostering accountability.
7 Security Metrics To Track Across the Security Organization
Many security metrics can be tracked. The unique needs of your business will determine which ones to choose. Additionally, security teams are likely to have more specific metrics to track depending on their goals. Here are seven examples of some of the most commonly tracked metrics.
Mean time to detect (MTTD)
The longer an intruder goes undetected, the longer they can operate within the network, gaining access to increasingly sensitive data or other business assets or initiating a privilege escalation attack. The mean time to detect is the average time between when a security incident occurs and when it’s detected. This metric helps detection and response teams assess the effectiveness of the organization’s incident management processes.Â
Mean time to respond (MTTR)
Detecting a threat is only part one of a cybersecurity incident; responding to it is the second. Mean time to response measures the time required to resolve a threat and return the system to full operational condition. Measuring the time needed to remove a threat and regain control of the compromised system helps detection and response teams gauge the strength of the processes used to troubleshoot and resolve issues once they’ve been identified.
Unauthorized access attemptsÂ
Intrusion detection and response are integral to any business’s overall cybersecurity framework. Trackable security metrics include the number of unauthorized access attempts detected and blocked, where those attempts originated, and how quickly they were addressed. These metrics can help security teams fine-tune their processes for investigation and response, prevention of false positives, and how security data is correlated and analyzed.Â
Number of security incidents
Tracking how many security incidents have been detected and resolved within a certain period of time can capture trend data over time. Looking deeper to identify the number of each type of incident, their effect on the business, and how responses such as data recovery were managed reveals details that can help security teams improve detection and response processes.
Average cost per security incident
Responding to and resolving a breach is costly. Measuring the average cost per security incident should be as holistic as possible and include expenses such as the time required to investigate and resolve the incident, lost employee productivity, Â production losses, and other related expenses. Quantifying the average cost per incident can result in more informed decisions about how security-related resources are allocated.Â
Vendor security preparedness levels
Vendors with insufficient security controls can give intruders an access point into critical systems. A security incident with a vendor can quickly spread, so it’s essential to actively monitor your level of exposure to vendor-related risks. Tracking security metrics such as vendor’s security ratings, Security Operations Center (SOC) reports, and other security documentation can help teams better understand and quantify the level of risk each vendor presents.Â
Percentage of employees who complete security trainingÂ
Employees represent a significant security vulnerability. Responding to a phishing email can compromise an employee’s user credentials. A disgruntled employee with elevated permission can delete files or exfiltrate sensitive data. These are just two examples. By providing employees with instruction on how to recognize threats and respond, security compliance teams can better monitor employee training engagement to reduce exposure to these types of threats.Â
Improve Your Security Metrics with Snowflake
Snowflake provides a platform with advanced data analytics capabilities, baked-in security features, and virtually unlimited storage and scalable compute resources. With Snowflake, organizations can collect, analyze, and visualize security-related data in a centralized and scalable manner. Security teams can more effectively advance mission-critical activities with complete visibility without worrying about concurrency, resource contention, compute power, scalability, or cost. Snowflake enables teams within the broader security organization to make more data-driven decisions for cloud security, compliance, detection, and response, and more.