The Most Important Security Metrics to Maintain Compliance: Best Practices for Prioritizing Cyber Resilience

With the recent surge of high-profile data breaches, supply chain vulnerabilities (SolarWinds, Log4j, and MOVEit, most notably), and targeted cyberattacks, the digital world is becoming increasingly precarious. At the same time, consumers are increasingly sharing sensitive data with companies in exchange for convenience and efficiency. For these reasons, organizations have a growing responsibility to not only avoid breaches, but safeguard their users’ data. Consequently, a raft of laws and regulations have been established to protect this confidential information being stored or transferred via these systems.

Data protection regulations tend to be quite extensive and require constant monitoring to ensure compliance metrics are met effectively within the organization. That’s why it’s important for security teams to establish a list of cybersecurity metrics that measure effectiveness, privacy metrics, participation, the window of opportunity, and any other information that can guide actionable security practices to protect data. Security managers rely on these cyber metrics to evaluate security vulnerabilities and pinpoint high-risk areas within their systems.

Without a quantitative approach to security, organizations become more susceptible to intrusion attempts, cybersecurity incidents, and security issues that can impact revenue and reputation. For senior management, quantifiable metrics provide crucial insights into how security objectives and security goals are being met across the company.

What are security metrics?

Security metrics are a way of measuring whether an organization’s cybersecurity program is accomplishing its security objectives and maintaining requirements. They are benchmarks that tell security professionals what is and isn’t working within the implemented security measures, allowing for improvements to be made to policies, systems, or processes. This approach helps close any gaps in data privacy metrics and application security.

While risk reduction is an important key performance indicator (KPI) for addressing the overall effectiveness of your security program, there are also different metrics that can provide insight into program performance. The metrics you choose to track should be quantifiable and hold influence over behavior and strategy. They should direct toward ongoing security efforts so you can monitor the progress of your framework over time. They should align with security objectives and security goals, directing toward ongoing actionable security practices to monitor the progress of your framework over time.

Metrics also allow security teams to share security program insights with senior management in an objective, easy-to-understand manner. Oftentimes, security professionals and board members speak different languages, so communicating with straightforward metrics is invaluable. Hard numbers and benchmarks help avoid confusion and efficiently highlight areas for improvement.

What metrics help you understand your current security posture and identify any gaps?

One of the most obvious and important cybersecurity metrics is dwell time. This is the amount of time a threat actor has undetected access within a network before being completely removed. It is a common issue in intrusion attempts and security incidents involving zero-day vulnerabilities. This is relevant because the longer it takes for security teams to contain an attack, the more it will cost.

Consider other cyber metrics that can be leveraged to drive change, such as:

• The number of known security vulnerabilities on internal and external systems helps identify potential threats.
• The mean time between a security patch release and actual implementation— is essential in application security.
• The number of employees that have completed a cybersecurity training program, showing engagement in actionable security practices. 
• Ranked vulnerabilities based on severity and priority ratings.

Metrics to track for common regulation compliance

One reason for tracking metrics is to ensure you are meeting any applicable compliance regulations, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR. As pressure mounts for executives to make data-driven decisions, measuring security metrics becomes more important than ever before. The metrics you choose to track need to effectively quantify your organization’s ability to maintain regulatory compliance and data privacy metrics performance.

Documenting your cybersecurity program and using data to improve its efficiency can not only help you decide what steps to take next, but can also help your organization avoid fines, lawsuits, and other penalties.

Take a look at some examples of security metrics that demonstrate compliance for the following regulations:

PCI DSS

PCI DSS compliance (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) refers to the regulations and standards a business must follow to ensure users’ credit card data is protected.

Examples of helpful metrics for maintaining PCI compliance include:

• The percentage of all inventoried software that is regularly and consistently evaluated for vulnerabilities and associated risk.
• The number of web servers that have been configured according to system standards is something security managers should monitor closely.
• The percentage of known vulnerabilities for which patches have been applied or otherwise mitigated.

HIPAA

HIPAA compliance aims to protect patient privacy, requiring security teams to set compliance metrics that meet industry standards and regulations.

Examples of key metrics to track to ensure HIPAA compliance include:

• The average time your recovery plan will take to address breaches and manage security incidents.
• The number of cybersecurity incidents reported by employees and stakeholders, offering insight into internal awareness of security issues.
• The number of recorded attempts to access data. It is a best practice to establish activity logs and regularly audit controls to record these attempts and make note of what was done with that data after it has been accessed.

GDPR

This European Union law applies to businesses handling EU residents’ data, even if the business is not EU-based.

Examples of key metrics to track for compliance include:

• The percentage of all systems utilizing data encryption.
• The number of breach notifications documented. It is important to note that data controllers are required to report personal data breaches no longer than 72 hours after becoming aware of the incident.

How SecurityScorecard can help

Modern organizations face constantly multiplying and evolving security threats, and consumers are choosing to share more data with companies than ever before. This is why continuous monitoring is crucial to a security program’s success. Security metrics are an objective, quantifiable way to track progress and compliance to avoid breaches and, in turn, fines and lawsuits.

SecurityScorecard makes it simple for security managers to monitor compliance regularly across their entire digital ecosystem. The platform’s compliance mapping tracks performance and highlights any gaps within each security mandate, allowing senior management to determine what is and isn’t working.

Security Ratings additionally provide you with the tools and intelligence you need to identify security shortcomings and improve cyber health across your organization. The consequences of being non-compliant far exceed the challenges of meeting industry standards. This is why it’s important to set yourself and your organization up for success from the start by setting clear goals and benchmarking against security metrics.