New rating system measures national cyber security risk

Although governments need to secure their nation's critical infrastructure from cyber attack, they can often lack the context in which to assess risk.

Security ratings specialist BitSight is addressing this with the announcement of its Sovereign Security Ratings, the first objective measurement of national cybersecurity risk.

As part of the BitSight Security Ratings Platform, the Sovereign Security Ratings portal allows analysts to benchmark the security and risk posture of multiple countries and industries in one view. With this information, government organizations gain intelligent and actionable insights into threats and can initiate action with the appropriate parties. It also allows the investigation of cyber threats at a country-wide scope, using historical forensics within their given country. Security practitioners can use this feature to determine whether a specific cyber threat affects organizations in their country.

The platform delivers global security benchmarking to assess country and industry cybersecurity risk exposure, enabling national agencies to self-assess their cybersecurity capabilities. Governments can then compare industries and critical infrastructure companies against counterparts in other nations.

It also offers the ability to continuously monitor and compare the security performance of critical infrastructure companies, and access to forensic details and readily available infection data to help remediation.

"We want to extend the trusted, time-tested, and actionable benefits of Security Ratings to government agencies and organizations, allowing them to assess cyber risk on a national scale," says Stephen Boyer, co-founder and CTO of BitSight. "While many organizations leverage a variety of intelligence feeds, they struggle to find an objective measurement of security performance at a national level. They also lack the ability to benchmark the security performance at a country-by-country or industry-by-industry level. Sovereign Security Ratings provide greater context, allowing organizations to understand their level of cyber risk relative to others. There is no other equivalent offering on the market. Today's announcement marks another industry first for BitSight."

You can find out more about the system on the BitSight website.

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