The fundamentals for building a secure business model
It’s important to not rely entirely on external forces to protect you from today’s cyber threats. A good cybersecurity plan bases itself on strong practices, good cybersecurity hygiene, and competency. That’s why your organization should approach cybersecurity with several steps we’ll list below. Remember, proactive cybersecurity isn’t about throwing money or expensive software at the problem, it’s about cybersecurity comprehension.
What should we prioritize in 2021 and onward?
CISOs and cybersecurity teams should emphasize certain characteristics for their cybersecurity teams. It will help grapple with the continued challenges brought on by cyber threats.
Remember and emphasize the basics
Like with many things, cybersecurity comes with fundamentals. Rules and basics guiding the principles of any good security strategy. Getting back to those and making sure they’re a prominent element to your cybersecurity efforts is critical for future protection.
Asset and password management, for instance, are two critical pieces of cybersecurity fundamentals. Healthy passwords and a cataloged list of vulnerable or internet-facing assets are foundations to good cybersecurity. But further beyond are aspects like threat detection, network monitoring, cybersecurity education, streamlining reports, and comprehensive record keeping.
Introduce the necessity of automated cyber-defense
The unfortunate modern reality is modern cyber-attacks have evolved into sophisticated, ravenous campaigns. From sheer saturation to their own automated methods, security teams are overwhelmed with red flag events and alerts.
That’s why introducing and applying proactive, automated monitoring is essential to good cybersecurity. Intelligent analytics also greatly assist with the sheer amount of incoming data. Big Data is important, no doubt, but entirely useless if a team can’t make use of it. How CISO teams and management choose to implement automated resources is up to them, but it’s imperative it becomes a point of discussion.
Make cybersecurity a critical meeting point
A problem that creates fault lines in healthy cybersecurity policy is discussion, or more specifically, lack of. Cybersecurity has long been treated as only an IT issue. And while this may have been true a decade ago, the interconnectivity of our personal devices, information, and cybersecurity means it’s shifted well beyond IT-specific concerns.
Cybersecurity is a business problem too, and it shouldn’t take much convincing to prove otherwise. The sheer damage breaches, ransomware, and malware attacks can cause is severe.
Start from the perspective of ‘business risks’ while simultaneously dispelling myths around cybersecurity. No enterprise is too big or small to be a target – threat actors will go after any network if it involves profit. Therefore, if nothing else, cyberattacks critically harm a company’s bottom line.
Remember the importance of zero-trust policies
Zero-trust infrastructure is another significant component of any solid cybersecurity policy. In an age where social engineering and phishing schemes continue to rise in prominence, creating an environment of extra scrutiny can greatly reduce the potential threat impact of social engineering scams.
Zero-trust essentially means “trust until verify,” waterfalling into both communication and policy. For example, checking a message is from a verified source before responding or opening its content(s).
Develop comprehensive backup and incident response plans
A more pressing reality is the realization cyberattacks are an eventuality. This means you will, at some point, experience a cyber attack in some capacity. Therefore, having backup and incident response resources is essential to the fundamentals of any IT security infrastructure.
BDR plans have always been critical to healthy IT, but now more than ever with increased reliance on cloud and remote solutions. Since cyber-attacks are an eventuality, you should have response plans, such as protecting data, a guideline for getting services back online, mitigating damage, and identifying the affected networks.
Remember penetration testing
One key aspect of your cyberinfrastructure: remember penetration testing. It doesn’t matter how much cash or complex “solutions” you’ve thrown at IT. None of it matters if responsive measures are not effective. Penetration testing should be a routine characteristic of your cybersecurity plan, at least in some capacity.
Internalize the fundamentals
Like adopting healthy habits, structuring your cybersecurity plans with the fundamentals creates an environment that readily responds to new threats. Adoption of remote working and cloud infrastructure has given businesses additional options but also opened the gates for increased cyber-attacks. That’s why starting with the basics creates long-term, proactive defense.
