Business Outcomes

Introduction

At Balbix, we focus on delivering measurable business outcomes rather than simply providing capabilities. A business outcome is a concise, defined, and observable result or change in business performance, supported by specific metrics.

It's important to understand that capabilities or processes themselves are not outcomes - they are the means to achieve outcomes. This documentation outlines the specific business outcomes you can expect when implementing Balbix's solutions.

CAASM (Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management) Outcomes

CAASM provides foundational visibility capabilities essential for cyber risk reduction. When you implement Balbix CAASM, you can expect the following outcomes:

1. Comprehensive Asset Visibility You will gain complete visibility into all assets owned by your organization, improving your understanding of your potential attack surface. This visibility extends to asset inventory, vulnerability assessment, and security control gaps, providing the foundation for effective cybersecurity management.

2. Streamlined Audit Compliance Reporting You will generate more accurate, current, and comprehensive reports for asset inventory, security controls, and EOL software. This streamlines your compliance processes and reduces the time spent preparing for audits.

3. Reduced Operational Overhead You will eliminate the burden of maintaining manual processes and homegrown applications for IT and cybersecurity workflows. This includes vulnerability management and SOC operations, allowing your team to focus on more strategic initiatives.

4. Enhanced Shadow IT Management You will reduce resistance to data collection from "shadow IT," third-party systems, and line-of-business applications that fall outside IT governance. While your IT department may not be responsible for these assets, your security team can now maintain visibility into them.

5. Improved CMDB Accuracy You will enhance IT team productivity by improving the accuracy of your existing CMDB through periodic updates of assets and attributes missed by traditional reconciliation processes. This addresses the common challenge of CMDBs becoming outdated shortly after being updated.

6. Faster Identification of Material Threats You will identify material threats more quickly, which is particularly important for SEC compliance. This allows for more timely response to emerging security risks.

RBVM (Risk-Based Vulnerability Management) Outcomes

RBVM helps you prioritize vulnerabilities based on actual risk to your organization. When you implement Balbix RBVM, you can expect the following outcomes:

1. Accelerated Mitigation of Critical Vulnerabilities You will achieve faster mitigation of vulnerabilities (CVEs and Security Issues) that truly matter to your organization, resulting in lower residual cyber risk. Key metrics you'll be able to track include:

   • Mean Open Vulnerability Age (MOVA)

   • Mean Time to Mitigate (MTTM)

   • Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR)

   • Mean Time to Patch (MTTP)

   • Breach Likelihood and Breach Risk

2. Enhanced Regulatory Compliance You will meet reporting and compliance requirements (such as DORA, SEC, TSA ASOE) in a maximally automated way. By defining your compliance SLAs in Balbix, you'll receive appropriate reports and supporting evidence to meet compliance objectives.

3. Time and Cost Savings for Security Teams You will save time for everyone involved in vulnerability management and IT teams. Less manual work will be required for discovering and evaluating vulnerabilities, including research. With patch supersedence information, you'll reduce the total work needed for patching.

4. Reduced Tool Costs You will lower your technology costs with a single integrated CAASM+RBVM+CRQ platform, eliminating the need for multiple separate tools. This translates to direct savings in licensing fees and management costs.

5. Improved Vulnerability Prioritization You will prioritize vulnerabilities based on a comprehensive risk calculation that incorporates severity, threats/exploits, exposure, security controls, and business impact. This ensures that your team addresses the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk first.

6. Streamlined Patching Workflow You will track applicable superseding patches and optimize your patching strategy, allowing you to update directly to the latest patch version and streamline the remediation process.

CRQ (Cyber Risk Quantification) Outcomes

CRQ helps you measure, communicate, and manage cyber risk in monetary terms. When you implement Balbix CRQ, you can expect the following outcomes:

1. Improved Security Project Prioritization You will decrease risk through better security project and task prioritization. This will drive improved engagement in cyber risk management across your organization, as stakeholders better understand the financial implications of security decisions.

2. Reduced Third-Party Risk You will decrease third-party risk by leveraging data instead of qualitative metrics to drive vendors to lower their cyber risk. This data-driven approach enables more effective vendor management.

3. Enhanced Stakeholder Awareness You will increase credibility with senior stakeholders by aligning cyber risk with enterprise risk in terms they understand—dollars and cents. This helps you better understand cyber insurance needs and communicate them effectively.

4. Streamlined SEC Compliance You will comply with SEC (and other) regulations by streamlining and codifying materiality determination. For SEC regulations specifically, Balbix provides a materiality determination system that enables you to file defensible 10Ks and 8Ks.

5. Demonstrated Security Posture Improvement You will show ongoing improvement of your cybersecurity posture and resilience against frameworks such as NIST. This provides tangible evidence of security program effectiveness.

6. Optimized Security Investments You will save money through tools consolidation, better prioritization of operational activities, and more effective security projects. This ensures you get the maximum return on your security investments.

Key Metrics

To track the success of your Balbix implementation, you can monitor these key metrics:

For CAASM

• Percentage of assets with good coverage

• Percentage of applications with good coverage

• Maximum and average freshness of data

• Change in percentage of accurate assets in CMDB

• Security control gap metrics (e.g., percentage of assets with no EDR coverage)

• Cost/time savings due to improved workflows

For RBVM

• Breach risk reduction relative to investment

• Compliance risk exposure reduction

• People cost saved through automation

• Tool cost reduction

For CRQ

• Breach impact (based on nature of business)

• Inherent cyber risk

• Mitigated cyber risk (due to security controls)

• Residual cyber risk (after risk acceptance)