Cybersecurity is no longer just an IT concern; it’s a business imperative. A single failure can result in millions in fines, damage investor trust, and disrupt operations.
In 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) updated its Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), adding a sixth core function: Govern. This update underscores the growing importance of cyber risk governance at the executive and board levels, emphasizing that cybersecurity is a business issue, not just an IT one.
A year later, NIST's latest blog post celebrates the first anniversary of CSF 2.0, highlighting updates to its IR 8286 Series. These updates define the relationship between cybersecurity and enterprise risk management (ERM), providing organizations with guidance on integrating cybersecurity (via the NIST CSF) into ERM. Topics include:
- Integrating Cybersecurity and Enterprise Risk Management
- Identifying and Estimating Cybersecurity Risk for Enterprise Risk Management
- Prioritizing Cybersecurity Risk for Enterprise Risk Management
- Staging Cybersecurity Risks for Enterprise Risk Management and Governance Oversight
- Using Business Impact Analysis to Inform Risk Prioritization and Response
Why is this important? As 2025 unfolds, the cybersecurity landscape is evolving rapidly, making NIST-recommended governance strategies more critical than ever. While the NIST framework is voluntary, its adoption is growing. Your organization’s approach can play a key role in building trust with customers, investors, third parties, and other stakeholders.
It’s crucial to adapt to this evolving framework and ensure cybersecurity decision-making is embedded in your organization’s governance structure. But how exactly can you do this?
Understanding the Govern Function
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework has been designed to help businesses of all sizes better understand, manage, and reduce their cybersecurity risk and protect their networks and data. Governance was an element of each of the original five Functions, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover, but in 2024 NIST decided that it needed greater emphasis.
Govern is aimed at monitoring organizations’ cybersecurity risk management strategy, expectations, and policy, elevating cybersecurity from a technical concern to a strategic business priority. It involves aligning cyber risk management with broader business objectives, defining clear leadership accountability for cybersecurity, ensuring compliance with evolving cybersecurity laws, and improving communication across leadership, security teams, and third parties.
Is your organization preparing for the shift?
With this expanded framework, organizations must rethink how they govern and manage cyber risks. Here’s what you need to focus on in 2025 and beyond:
1. Elevate Cybersecurity to Your Boardroom
The infusion of AI into attacks, the rise of new technologies, and the growing complexities of cybersecurity have made it a critical concern for boards. Cyber risk is now a top-tier business risk, requiring strategic oversight and executive accountability. It’s now on your shoulders to ensure that your board of directors actually understands and actively engages with cybersecurity strategy.
(Here is a practical guide to meeting diverse board expectations and delivering impactful presentations that resonate).
2. Align Cyber Risk with Your Business Objectives
Your cybersecurity decisions can no longer be made in isolation. They must be integrated into your organization’s broader risk management strategy, ensuring alignment with business objectives and regulatory requirements. The ability to prioritize risks based on business impact is essential for making informed decisions that support both security and organizational goals.
3. Define Clear Roles and Foster Collaboration
Effective governance begins with clarity. It’s crucial to define responsibilities for each task and foster seamless collaboration among cross-functional teams. With areas of overlap and multiple stakeholders, clear ownership ensures that nothing falls through the cracks, allowing for better tracking and more efficient management of cyber risks.
Organizations that fail to integrate governance into their cybersecurity frameworks face significant risks—non-compliance, reputational damage, and heightened scrutiny at the board level.
How SeeMetrics Can Help
Following the introduction of Govern, SeeMetrics launched a dedicated set of customizable cybersecurity boards to allow security leaders to govern more effectively. These boards are out-of-the-box (OOTB) collections of ready-to-use metrics for security leaders to manage their policies, processes, and key performance indicators (KPIs) driven by organizational context and a clear connection between risk and business.
Each SeeMetrics board provides a different point of view. Below are three.
Lay of the Land Board shows the current state of security operations at a glance, backed by a comprehensive analysis. Serving as a snapshot, this board offers a high-level view, tracking and analyzing trends against KPIs.
Policy Enforcement Board is designed to oversee and enforce those policies that are most important to track on a daily basis. An assembly of key metrics from various domains such as security awareness and endpoint protection, ensuring that policies are consistently applied, helping mitigate risks and enhance posture.
NIST Functions Dedicated Board serves as an organized platform where relevant information, processes, and metrics are categorized based on the corresponding NIST function in order to streamline and guide activities related to each. By breaking down the functions this way, organizations are able to effectively govern.
In addition, since the introduction of Govern boards, SeeMetrics launched automated board reporting for you to instantly access data visualizations of performance, risks and progress, and build clear, board-ready narratives.
Are you ready to transform governance from a challenge to a competitive advantage? Book a demo today and see how SeeMetrics makes governance measurable, intuitive, and board-ready.
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