service Offerings



optimizing resiliency



By integrating risk management with security and disaster preparedness capabilities, companies can effectively improve corporate resiliency. Bellwether can assist companies to optimize this capability by applying targeted methodologies and services.



Program Assessment |
Maturity | Gap Analysis





Assessing the maturity and effectiveness of an overall security or risk management program and its constituent parts is core to prioritizing gaps and identifying improvement opportunities. This helps ensure sound decision-making on allocating resources between alternative mitigation strategies and best practices.

  • Score maturity by security or risk domain
  • Map maturity to adopted framework(s)
  • Prioritize gaps (by criticality)
  • Identify improvement options

An independent, objective third-party assessment will provide multiple improvement opportunities and a dependable basis for investing corporate resources. Bellwether's approach also supports internal governance requirements, internal audit procedures, regulatory response and improves compliancy.



Benchmarking | Best Practices





Bellwether can design a benchmarking program to compare and identify the practices undertaken by industry and functional leaders who are outperforming their peers. We search for superior examples employed within your industry (best-in-class) and within a specific function (best-in-function). We can undertake:

  • Peer solicitation
  • ​Data collection and analysis
  • Best practices identification
  • Resourcing comparison

Our approach to benchmarking goes well beyond a “survey” and incorporates a structured interview process subsequent to data collection to validate data-points and understand the rationale for differences. As not all best practices are appropriate for every situation, we can also evaluate their potential contribution to you.



Organizational Effectiveness





Bellwether helps evaluate and develop organizational, corporate interfacing and business engagement models. We frequently compare best-in-function models and resourcing within industries and help clients re-align security functions with corporate priorities and the threat environment. Our work typically focuses on:

  • Organizational structure
  • Interfacing strategies
  • Roles and responsibilities
  • Internal communication

In many corporations, the combination of enterprise threat management, advances in technology and the need to integrate systems is driving convergence among security and preparedness functions. We can identify and evaluate alternative models in terms of performance, cost and applicability, thereby enabling you to select the model and practices that are best suited to your needs.



Cost Benefit Analysis |
ROI Quantification





Cost-benefit analyses allow your resources to be focused on the mitigative functions and techniques that bring the most benefit to your enterprise. CBAs are essential to program and best practices evaluations, as well as to resource allocation and effective risk management and security strategies. Together with you, we will undertake:

  • Cost analysis
  • Benefit quantification
  • Cost-Benefit comparison
  • Return on Investment (ROI) determination

Bellwether can help you quantify the benefits from investing in cyber and other security and risk management programs and identify opportunities for the reallocation of resources to improve overall return. Risk quantification enables companies to compare risks and potential investments across the entire enterprise.



Metrics





Analyzing metrics is core to assessing the effectiveness of a security or risk management program and to identifying potential gaps and weaknesses within it. Metrics enable you to understand whether things are getting better, worse or staying the same. Using metrics effectively requires identifying and prioritizing:

  • Key risk indicators (KPIs)
  • Key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Normalization and/or comparative metrics
  • Tolerance levels

Defining, validating and storing metrics is essential to being able to depend on the implications from their analysis. Comparison to expectations or targets can provide valuable insights. Improvement opportunities can be identified through trend, cross-sectional and benchmarking analysis, or a combination of all three.



Dashboards





A dashboard is a management tool that can materially improve governance and management processes. It provides an empirical basis for identifying actionable items that when compared with the associated resource requirements, enables prioritization based on potential return on investment. Good dashboards typically have:

  • A digest of core comparative metrics
  • Effective visualizations
  • Automated alerting against targets
  • Ease of comprehension

Effective dashboards are tailored to their audience such as departmental management, executive leadership, or a Board of Directors. Ideally dashboards should be derived from the same database and roll-up for efficient decision-making. They are also very useful as an outreach tool to other parts of the business.



Continuous Improvement





Security and risk management programs are dynamic in nature: the threat landscapes and mitigation technologies are continually changing. This requires that security and risk management programs continuously improve to stay ahead of the danger. To ensure continuous improvement, leadership must:

  • Measure and improve program maturity
  • Set clear quantified goals and objectives
  • Optimally allocate resources
  • Monitor program effectiveness overall

By analyzing effectiveness, program goals, objectives and tolerances can be reset to ensure continual improvement. It is important to quantify both the costs and benefits associated with program components to establish appropriate boundaries and that the program’s overall ROI complies with investment requirements.



Insider Threat Management





Threats from within an organization can be substantial and easily overlooked. Combined with an outside threat actor, an inside threat can potentially be catastrophic. Monitoring individual behaviors is often unpopular and legally complex, requiring compliance with local laws. Effective insider threat management programs require:

  • Top-level sponsorship/mandate
  • A comprehensive enterprise-wide architecture
  • An effective business engagement model
  • An integrated intelligence program

There is an increasing number of tools available to provide and prioritize alerts based on unusual behavioral characteristics. The larger challenge facing many organizations is that of efficiently filtering and evaluating these multiple inputs so as to be able to investigate and escalate concerns appropriately.



Security Education and Outreach





Engaging the eyes and ears of employees across your organization is an important source of intelligence for risk management. As threats and policies change, it is important that companies continuously raise awareness and reinforce employee responsibility to protect the company and its assets. Bellwether can assist with:

  • Program structure and strategy
  • Module development and deployment plan
  • Performance monitoring
  • Ongoing program improvement

Ensuring compliance in today's environment is increasingly challenging. An effective Security Education and Outreach program can engage employees and management, raise awareness levels, and provide tools to form the first line of defense, helping to ensure your enterprise is proactive rather than reactive.



Incident Analysis





Incident analysis is important to assessing threats and mitigative effectiveness. It is core to a data-based approach to mitigation and resource allocation, while also serving as a performance metric for continual improvement. Incident reporting, database management and analysis must be effectively integrated. Bellwether can assist in:

  • Incident reporting protocol
  • Data categorization and normalization
  • Severity tiering
  • Trend and cross-sectional analysis

Companies often record incident data, yet seldom take the opportunity to analyze it on a consistent and statistical basis. Incidents and events must be maintained in a database appropriate for this purpose. Real-time analytic capability and report generation are important if the system is to be used to its full potential.



Security Strategy





Corporations need a well-thought-through security and risk management strategy to protect themselves and their shareholders. Realistic growth objectives require effective strategies that reflect enterprise capabilities. Comprehensive strategic plans are time-consuming to align, develop and compile. Bellwether can help with:

  • Risk-based security vision
  • Mitigation objectives and technology program
  • Resource allocation/performance monitoring
  • Implementation road map

Effective strategies must be practical in nature. Strategic plans should be sufficiently detailed to provide clear direction to those accountable for their implementation. Bellwether can help you identify the milestones and obstacles that need to be overcome, monitor progress and help you achieve your goals.



Resource Allocation





Bellwether can help your organization determine a strategy to allocate its Security and Risk Management budgets in an optimal manner, based on quantifying the costs and benefits associated with risk and security program components. A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis will enable ROI comparison. We can undertake:

  • Cost and benefit analysis
  • Risk-return prioritization
  • Service level evaluation
  • Organization model and staff mapping

Corporations who undertake resource allocation planning and analysis are more aware of the benefits and risks associated with incremental changes in resourcing, can respond more effectively to budget initiatives and will have a hard, data-based rationale with which to engage and solicit colleague support.



The Bellwether Group, Inc.



508-302-2446 (fax)
info@bellwethergroupinc.com