Corporate security and compliance teams are scrambling to understand the implications of the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission's recently announced cybersecurity disclosure and reporting regulations.
While the need to report 'material cybersecurity incidents' within four days is a concern for many security teams already stretched to the limit, the requirements for ongoing disclosure and governance may have a bigger impact.
Industry leaders are touting the potential benefits of the new regulations, especially for investment customers who will enjoy greater transparency and accountability regarding security breaches.
The SEC is responsible for regulating the security industry, and its cybersecurity regulations are designed to ensure the protection of sensitive customer and financial data.
' Periodically disclose the company's cybersecurity risk management, strategy, and governance in annual reports.
As companies prepare for the new SEC rules, they must assess and adjust their current security priorities and initiatives to ensure they align with the new regulations.
Organizations must constantly improve their security strategies and infrastructure in response to evolving cyber threats to protect sensitive data, financial assets, and mission-critical applications and systems.
Introducing new cybersecurity programs and operating a high-performance security infrastructure is costly, especially for smaller organizations.
As the SEC is essentially breaking new ground, many companies may need help interpreting and complying with the requirements.
A cybersecurity incident can damage a company's reputation and investor confidence.
The new SEC guidelines will create greater visibility into security breaches and bring into focus how quickly and effectively companies responded to an incident.
Aside from general SOX guidelines, there were no U.S. federal laws that required specific timeframes for companies to report material cybersecurity incidents to the public or regulatory authorities.
Companies will need to document and execute against their definitions of time and materiality - testing not only their detection tools and workflows but their overall security governance.
Security professionals predict that fines will be released shortly and may run into millions of dollars.
Security log analytics and management are critical to cybersecurity.
Logs are the first things security pros examine if they suspect a cyber incident.
By having existing security applications feed their logs directly into cloud-native solutions, security pros can quickly determine the severity and scope of potential incidents.
One of the biggest challenges companies now face is anticipating how the SEC regulations will play out in practice.
His background includes the security, compliance, and cloud computing disciplines.
Mr. Gerchow has years of practical experience in building agile security, compliance and, IT teams in rapid development organizations.
This Cyber News was published on www.cyberdefensemagazine.com. Publication date: Sat, 16 Dec 2023 06:13:07 +0000