The S2Score is a cyber risk score that communicates the information security risk of an organization, it’s vendors, and it’s team.
SecurityStudio’s S2Score is a solution for measuring cyber risk. It solves the problems of complexity and measurement and simplifies the way risk is communicated so businesses can make informed risk decisions.
The S2Score is a cyber risk score ranging from 300 – 850, like a credit score. The score range resonates well with everyone, allowing for accessibility in understanding across multiple levels of an organization, not just the tech team.
Find out your S2ScoreThe organizational information security risk assessment tool used by thousands of organizations, both public and private.
Learn moreThe information security risk management tool developed to simplify, automate, and standardize third-party vendor risk management processes.
Learn moreThe organizational aggregate of your employees' information security knowledge gaps that helps inform employee training going forward.
Learn moreA comprehensive dashboard for your MSP to manage your clients' modules and users.
Learn moreThe original S2Score didn’t even have a name when it was developed by our founder, Evan Francen. He was the CISO at a $3.9B pharmaceutical company in 2005, and he was challenged with communicating information security to non-information security people. He built the first assessment scoring methodology that measured risk as “high”, “guarded”, or “moderate”. The beginning cyber risk score equations were a good foundation because they were applied consistently; however, the representation of risk was confusing because of the subjective scoring words.
In 2008, Evan co-founded FRSecure. The assessment originally developed years earlier would become the cornerstone offering for FRSecure. The math also evolved, and the cyber risk score became more refined. Subjective words were replaced with grades A, B, C, D, and F. This was a much better way to communicate information security risk, but they were missing a punch. People were comfortable settling with mediocrity and had trouble getting the point. Comments like, “even Cs get degrees” were common and information security improvements were not consistently made.
In 2015, FRSecure started to use a score ranging from 300 – 850. The score range resonated well with information security and non-information security people alike because of people's familiarity with the credit score.
In 2017, Evan founded SecurityStudio, and the S2Score was born. SecurityStudio was established as a vehicle to help guide and develop good information security fundamentals across all industries.
Today, the S2Score is used by thousands of organizations across all industries. The algorithms behind the score have gotten tighter, the assessments have gotten better, and everyone who uses the S2Score has benefited from its consistency and simplicity.
We receive questions about the S2Score often from a variety of sources, including our partners, our customers, and industry experts.
There are numerous reasons to get your own S2Score. Here are just a few:
• The S2Score is a consistent way to measure your information security risk.
• The S2Score is a simple way to communicate information security risk and the current state of your security program to others; boards of directors, executive management, etc.
• The S2Score can easily be shared with your customers to satisfy their third-party information security risk requirements.
• The S2Score can be shared with regulators to satisfy compliance requirements.
• The validity and credibility of the S2Score has already been established through adoption.
Anyone can create an S2Score at any time.
There are two ways to get your own S2Score:
1. Through a SecurityStudio authorized partner. If you want/need help with your assessment or if you want/need a third-party validation of your S2Score, this might be your best option.
2. With your own account on the SecurityStudio platform.
The only official S2Score comes from the SecurityStudio platform.
Almost everyone accepts the S2Score.
The S2Score has been widely accepted and praised by thousands of people and organizations. The S2Score is easily understood and accepted by boards of directors, executive management, and personnel at all levels within organizations.
The S2Score has also been widely accepted by regulators, auditors, and legal counsel. The S2Score has been used to demonstrate compliance with HIPAA (even as part of a Corrective Action Plan or “CAP”), GLBA (FDIC, OCC, NCUA, etc.), and others. Legal counsel has used the S2Score in numerous cases to support the defense of clients in civil cases.
The S2Score has also been used to lower cyber insurance rates and improve bond ratings for schools and municipalities.
Absolutely.
Today, there is no one score to rule them all. Our information security market/industry hasn’t matured enough yet. Until it does, we recommend trying out different scoring mechanisms for information security risk. Exploring other ways of doing things is beneficial to you and your organization.
The time and effort to get your S2Score is minimal in most cases and the cost is purposely low. Compare your S2Score with your other scoring system and choose what you like better. If nothing else, one score will be a good sanity check against the other.
Regardless of which score you use to measure and manage your information security program, your effort using the S2Score will be rewarded by the use cases for the S2Score.
There are many ways to use the S2Score, and most of them revolve around the concepts of information security measurement, management, and communication. Using the S2Score allows you to answer the four golden information security questions easily and credibly:
1. Where are we at? Your current S2Score.
2. Where are we going? Your future S2Score (using our platform’s built-in roadmap function).
3. When will we get there? Also, your future S2Score, plotted on a timeline (using our platform’s built-in roadmap function).
4. How much will it cost us? The last function of the roadmap, using the S2Score as the basis.
Using the S2Score over time develops trends that allow you to demonstrate your commitment to information security in a tangible and easily understood manner. The S2Score can become your best friend in accomplishing all your information security goals.
Of course! Here are ways that we’ve seen the S2Score shared with others:
• Some organizations have shared their S2Score to attract new customers. One organization has even published their score publicly on their website.
• Many organizations have shared their S2Score to satisfy their customers vendor due diligence requirements. This works especially well when their customer uses our S2VENDOR tool with integrated scoring.
• Many organizations have shared their S2Score with regulators and auditors with exceptional results.
• Organizations have shared their S2Score with legal counsel in support of their defense after an incident. A “good” S2Score hasn’t always been necessary, but an S2Score that has improved over time has been very beneficial.
Our suggestion is to use the S2Score wherever you can to further your mission. Information security must contribute to the mission, and the S2Score is great for this.
We cannot share the math, but we can explain it to you. There are two primary reasons we don’t share the math:
1. The current algorithm, if exposed publicly, could potentially be manipulated by someone looking to artificially inflate their S2Score.
2. The math changes over time. We are always improving the way we do things, and we don’t want multiple algorithms floating around in the public domain.
One of the most important functions about the S2Score is consistency in its various applications. Applied consistency is critical. The trick is to maintain consistency yet allow enough flexibility to account for some uniqueness found between organizations (and people).
In the simplest terms, here’s how things work in the S2ORG assessment:
• The overall assessment is broken down into its components, starting with Phases. The four Phases are:
1. Phase 1 – Administrative Controls
2. Phase 2 – Physical Controls
3. Phase 3 – Internal Technical Controls
4. Phase 4 – External Technical Controls
• Each of the Phases is further broken down into Sections, Controls, and Statements.
• Every statement is given a value for “True”, “False”, and “N/A” depending upon its importance to the control. This is a measurement of vulnerability only.
• Weights are applied to Controls, Sections, and Phases to account for the importance of one or another back up the chain. For instance, one statement could have a ripple effect (and probably does) up through the entire Phase. Weights are used to determine the size of the “ripple.” This is where threats start to play a role in the scoring.
• Additionally, two of the Phases (2 – Physical and 3 – Internal Technical Controls) include criteria not found elsewhere in the assessment:
• Phase 2 includes crime and natural threat data that must be scored.
Scores here are based upon the types of threats. Simple tables and ranges are used.
Weights are applied based on ranges because of the variability in the data.
• Phase 3 includes raw vulnerability scanning data that must be scored.
CVSS scores are used, but not at face value. The CVSS score is more weighted to vulnerability than risk.
Scoring for the S2Score is factored from ranges found in the scanning data.
This is how the math works. As we continue to refine the algorithms, we’ll continually revisit what else we can share.
The simple answer is “yes.”
Risk is a word that’s used much more than it’s understood. Risk is the likelihood of something bad happening and the impact if it did. Likelihood and impact are functions of vulnerabilities and threats. The S2Score does represent degrees of vulnerabilities and applicable threats, so yes, the S2Score absolutely represents risk.
Where most people get wrapped around the axle is by looking for a quantitively “perfect” representation of risk or a “perfect” risk assessment. These things don’t exist, so we’ll define one that works great, the S2Score.
We use the analogy of an inch to demonstrate what we’re talking about. In the 14th century, King Edward II ruled that an inch equaled 3 grains of barley placed end to end lengthwise. This became an inch, and we’ve been using it as a unit of measurement ever since. Now, we’re not royalty, but we’re declaring that a unit of measurement for risk is the S2Score.
The S2Score is not the only measurement (i.e. there’s the metric system too), but it’s a very valid and useful one.
There are three primary ways that an S2Score changes over time:
1. You have made information security-related changes (positive or negative) in your environment. This is the most common change in an S2Score.
2, Control or content changes have been made to the assessment you used for your S2Score.
• From time-to-time, the assessment you used to create your S2Score must be changed or updated to reflect changes in the world around us.
• These changes occur once a year and may require you to re-assess (which is a good best practice anyway).
• There were many changes introduced in the last revision of the assessment (v3R3), including the revision of sections, additions of/to controls, and removal of irrelevant content.
3. Significant threat trends and shifts may lead us to modify weights in one or more places throughout the assessment you used to create your S2Score. An S2Score in terms of vulnerability is relatively stagnant and/or predictable. Threats are more variable, and S2Scores can change even when you haven’t done anything.
The world around us changes constantly; therefore, so does our risk and the S2Score that represents it.
You have plenty of options:
1. You can use the information found throughout the rest of this document to justify the validity of your S2Score.
2. You can leverage the expertise provided by one of SecurityStudio’s authorized partners to:
• Answer questions and/or
• Validate the assessment you used to create your S2Score.
3. You can reference these facts:
• More than 1,000 organizations have their S2Score already.
• More than 2,000 S2Scores have been calculated and accepted by organizations, partners, regulators, auditors, and lawyers.
4. Contact SecurityStudio for support.
The S2Score validity has been solidly established over years of use.
Short answer is “yes”. Everything we do on the SecurityStudio platform is scored using the S2Score. There are three S2Score types that are all integrated with each other. S2Scores are generated in the S2ORG, the S2VENDOR, and the S2ME/S2TEAM risk assessment and management modules.
Anyone can create an S2Score for themselves. An assessment that someone creates for themselves is a “self-assessment.”
A validated S2Score is one where a trusted third-party provides an attestation of the S2Score’s accuracy. The organizations that can provide attestations are SecurityStudio authorized partners.
An organization and/or person cannot validate an assessment that they’ve completed themselves.
There are other information security scores on the market and most of them are very good. We suggest that you use multiple scores until one score emerges as the dominant one across the industry. Multiple scores will also permit you to compare them against each other. In comparing scores, be sure to compare them as close to “apples to apples” as possible, including the scope of what the score represents.
We’re always striving to make the S2Score the best information security risk score in the market, so give us a try and let us know what you think.
An S2Score doesn’t expire, but it does become less useful the older it gets. Our recommendations are to either use the SecurityStudio platform to manage your S2Score continually or re-assess every so often (semi-annually, annually, etc.).
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