Cybersecurity maturity models are critical tools for managing cyber risk, allowing chief information security officers (CISOs) to evaluate an organization’s digital vulnerabilities systematically and build targeted, measurable strategies that reduce these shortcomings.
However, the diversity of available frameworks, such as ISO 27001/2, CIS, and NIST CSF, poses challenges for quantifying their impact consistently. Without such standardization, comparing controls across the different cybersecurity frameworks is complex, leaving organizations to subjectively determine which risk reduction measures effectively reduce expenses to specific event types or attack vectors, for instance.
Moreover, these gaps hinder model analysis and risk quantification efforts, as the variations in risk and threat definitions and scope obscure true cybersecurity control upgrade implications.
To address these issues, cybersecurity firm Kovrr developed a uniform approach to control for impact measurement, first aligning control definitions across control frameworks and then mapping the controls to the adversarial behavior that each control impacts, according to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
This approach provides a clear link between the application of a specific control at a company and the specific limitations of adversarial behaviors and techniques. Combined with event-based modeling, CISOs and other cyber risk analysts can leverage this alignment and mapping to quantify the specific impact controls will have on their cyber security risk profile.
Consequently, organizations gain a consistent, quantifiable understanding of how well their security investments and initiatives mitigate real-world threats, making it easier for them to prioritize and justify upgrades, allocate resources, and build more resilient cybersecurity strategies based on clear, actionable insights.