CIO Bulletin

Providing businesses with the most relevant, up-to-date technology information—with a focus on cybersecurity—Consortium Networks

The cyber threat landscape is rapidly evolving. At the same time, our reliance on technology to accomplish the most basic tasks related to our business and personal lives has never been higher. Taken together, these trends point to the potential for cyber events to increasingly disrupt our lives.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, between July 2019 and December 2021, there was a 65% increase in identified global exposed losses related to business email compromise, totaling over $43 billion between June 2016 and December 2021. And this is just one type of cyber threat. Ransomware, as well as the public exposure of sensitive company data via cyber means, is also on the rise. No organization is small enough to “fly under the radar” or too large and well defended to be immune. What can be done to reduce the likelihood of a disruptive cyber event?

Cybersecurity investment has long been accepted as a requirement for businesses of all sizes. However, exactly how much to invest, where to invest, and what return should be expected on that investment are questions that even today, often remain unanswered.

Quickly changing privacy and breach notification laws sometimes increase the cost of compliance without measurably reducing risk to the business. Businesses face an alphabet soup of cybersecurity-related compliance requirements depending on their location, their customers’ location, and their industry: GDPR, CCPA, BIPA, HIPPA, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, NIST 800-53, and many more.

Marketing material is rife with fear, uncertainty, and doubt, promising a silver bullet to solve today’s cybersecurity problems. How do businesses find the signal in the noisy cybersecurity marketplace?

Consortium Networks educates and connects the cybersecurity community through the power of people and crowd-sourced threat intelligence. The firm is committed to providing businesses with the most relevant, up-to-date technology information, focusing on cybersecurity. By connecting clients, vendor partners, and experts, Consortium Networks strives to be the go-to resource for cybersecurity products, services, and guidance. They are the first organization dedicated to providing real-world feedback and data on solutions in operation in production environments at peer organizations.

In conversation with Larry Pfeifer, Founder of Consortium Networks

Q. Why was Consortium Networks established?

We started Consortium to provide the best customer service and help our clients and partners work together by crowd-sourcing knowledgeto understand the best possible way to reduce risk to a company. Working together to promote the best practices for a safe, secure, and resilient environment is what we do.

Q. How do you provide value across the board?

First is our customer service. We were founded on a principle of ‘whatever it takes’ to make the client experience the best possible around Service, Attitude, Teamwork, and Consistency.
Second is our expertise—our team of experienced cybersecurity experts provides guidance on a wide range of topics. Along with our experts, our current clients help crowd-source information to assist anyone who needs it.
Our Metrics that Matter^®platform is a cyber risk quantification tool that uses AI and machine learning to provide the most relevant information to help companies quantify and qualify risk and then articulate that risk to the CEO and board of directors on exactly how it impacts their business.
We also offer services that a CISO typically provides with the added benefit of visibility across industry verticals and vendor partners.

Q. How do you help cyber, IT, and business leaders overcome challenges?

Recognizing cybersecurity as a business enabler is a crucial challenge. MTM helps C-Suites and cyber professionals make this connection by quantifying cyber risk in broader terms. An investment in cybersecurity is more than simply preventing a negative experience—like brakes on a race car allow the driver to navigate the track aggressively—prioritized focus on cybersecurity can open up new business opportunities, enhance operational resilience to unexpected events like a pandemic or natural disaster, and strengthen environmental, social, and governance credentials from an investor perspective.

Q. What are the key benefits of Metrics that Matter^® (MTM)?

MTM quantifies your cyber risk in broader terms based on the controls you have in place, helping the cybersecurity and IT teams communicate with the C-Suite and board.
MTM maps your existing controls to the NIST cybersecurity framework and other frameworks in real-time for expedited compliance and reporting efforts.
MTM allows you to model how changes to controls in your environment will impact your risk by answering questions like:

How much risk do I reduce if I invest in a new product?
What happens to my risk if I migrate from one product to another?
What ROI should I expect from an investment in enhancing the maturity of my existing controls?

MTM is integrated with cyber threat intelligence feeds, so you can search for recent threats and quickly see where you have (or lack) controls to mitigate the threat.

Q. How does Consortium Networks help clients meet their needs?

Consortium Networks is client-driven. We are our clients’ cybersecurity concierge. No challenge is too small or too big for our team and our network to help solve.
Best in class services—we provide in-house expertise to accelerate business enablement via cybersecurity improvements.
Best in class products—our team meets with at least ten new and emerging vendor partners monthly, cutting through the marketing hype and delivering actionable takeaways to our clients.
Our team is an extension of your team, and our network is second to none.

Q. How do you help your clients leverage the established and growing community of Consortium Networks members?

The network effect—Consortium Networks was founded as an information-sharing resource by CISOs for CISOs and has grown while maintaining its core mission of helping people make better, risk-informed decisions about cybersecurity. We understand there’s no one size fits all approach, but by drawing on the experience of our network, you rarely need to start from scratch, no matter how complex your unique problem.

Additionally, our network includes a diverse representation across industries, geographies, knowledge, skills, and abilities to make every conversation relevant.

Q. What do you think is the best part of community service?

Consortium lives by 4 Core Values: Trust, Integrity, Collaboration, and Altruism. Altruism is helping others without any expectation of something in return, and it’s by far the best thing we do as a company—helping people understand and mitigate cyber risk and helping those in need within our communities because it’s the right thing to do.