Data Analytics for Cyber Risk Analysis Utilizing Cyber Incident Datasets

Abstract

The imperative factors of cybersecurity within institutions have become prevalent due to the rise of cyber-attacks. Cybercriminals strategically choose their targets and develop several different techniques and tactics that are used to exploit vulnerabilities throughout an entire institution. With the thorough analysis practices being used in recent policy and regulation of cyber incident reports, it has been claimed that data breaches have increased at alarming rates rapidly. Thus, capturing the trends of cyber-attacks strategies, exploited vulnerabilities, and reoccurring patterns as insight to better cybersecurity. This paper seeks to discover the possible threats that influence the relationship between the human component and cybersecurity posture. Along with this, we use the Vocabulary for Event Recording and Incident Sharing (VERIS) database to analyze previous cyber incidents to advance risk management that will benefit the institutional level of cybersecurity. We elaborate on the rising concerns of external versus internal factors that potentially put institutions at risk for exploiting vulnerabilities and conducting an exploratory data analysis that articulates the understanding of detrimental monetary and data loss in recent cyber incidents. The human component of this research attributes to the perceptive of the most common cause within cyber incidents, human error. With these concerns on the rise, we found contributing factors with the use of a risk-based approach and thorough analysis of databases, which will be used to improve the practical consensus of cybersecurity. Our findings can be of use to all institutions in search of useful insight to better their risk-management planning skills and failing elements of their cybersecurity.