Global digitalization requires businesses to align cybersecurity and business goals strategically. But cybercriminals don’t wait for companies to prepare the protection. They keep on developing new tactics, which do not allow to follow reaction-based security anymore. Keeping in mind your business goals, create your own and unique cybersecurity roadmap. To facilitate this task, choose virtual CISO services – leverage technology partner to provide an objective view of the security, enable collaboration with different business units, and help them build a cohesive plan of action.
- Why is prevention-based cybersecurity worth considering?
“Why would anybody need to hack me?”, “What useful for them do I have?”, “If they need to steal something, they will target someone bigger”, “So, they might block my computer or something. But what is the probability that this will happen?”. Have you ever asked such questions?
1. Reputation
If you want your clients and partners to trust you, you need to be worth it. If your client gives you personal information, they need it to be protected. And also, if something will happen with clients’ data, they won’t blame the attacker. Instead, they will blame those to whom they have entrusted their information.
2. Budget
By investing in cybersecurity, you will not see the return immediately, that’s true. Also, it definitely takes money, time, and other sources that could be invested directly in business growth or product development. But nothing of this will matter if someone steals your clients’ data and everyone refuses the product.
3. Insurance
Yes, you need to insure your business. But don’t forget insurance companies refuse to cover avoidable incident costs.
4. Size of the company
Small businesses are also targeted. And one of the main reasons is that they expect attackers to follow a “big fish.” But according to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, 43% of all fraud and breach victims are small- to medium-size businesses. Cyberattack entails a pause in work which might be crushing for such companies because the entire budget might take a hit, and reputation might be ruined.
5. Showing off
Let everyone know that you invest in cybersecurity and have a high level of cybersecurity in your environment and product – make it your feature.
2. Cybersecurity is not always about dealing with the incident
Imagine an old, rusty, broken plane. BUT this plane has the most excellent evacuation plan and all the best evacuation equipment, which allow passengers to survive after falling into the ocean. Would you choose this plane for your trip? The point is that this evacuation stuff doesn’t make the plane safe. And if everything for surviving after a crush is implemented, no one would go for the risk. The same story is with the reactive approach to cybersecurity. It is critically important to know how to deal with the incident. But what is better – to avoid this incident from happening. Not let the plane crash.
3. Create cybersecurity roadmap
With implemented cyber protection, you make the business processes more stable and continuous. Creating a cybersecurity roadmap allows you to align security processes with business goals and optimizes your overall cybersecurity posture. With cybersecurity “on board,” there is no need to be afraid of bad surprises.
Get the complete assessment of your current state
Before following any direction, it is necessary to determine your location. With risk assessment you will get an understanding of your legal, regulatory, and contractual requirements and see security gaps. First of all, you need to identify the most critical areas.
Sensitive data needs to be located and classified along with assets including hardware, software, IoT devices, and cloud resources. One of the essential paint points you most likely will need to deal with is access management concerns. Ensure that employees have access only to what they need in accordance with their responsibilities (for instance, HR doesn’t have access to a database of clients). Then if one account is hacked, malefactors couldn’t affect the whole system. These access management concerns also protect against negligence and indifference of employees.
A risk evaluation ensures a clear understanding of your requirements and evaluates the security controls to identify any gaps in protection. Many organizations leverage a best-practice cybersecurity framework such as ISO, NIST CSF, or the CIS Controls as the foundation for an assessment. These frameworks can help you see the current solutions’ actual effectiveness and set aims to improve the actions taken to protect sensitive data, perform change management, and provide access to critical assets.
Define the goal
After the assessment, you need to take a prioritization step. Find the “Achilles’ heel” of our business and deal with it at first.
Also, it is worth remembering that a robust cybersecurity strategy provides differentiated protection of the business’s most important assets, utilizing a tiered collection of security measures. Identify and protect those corporate assets that generate the most value for a company.
Your steps should be clearly ranged to provide an effective realization plan, with actions prioritized based on risk.
Tips for improving the roadmap
There is advice on how to optimize the cybersecurity roadmap and take the most benefits of it:
1. Make it flexible
Regularly reconsider your risks and plans. What seemed good six months ago may no longer be suitable for the company. Make the roadmap flexible and change it in accordance with existing priorities, threats, and regulatory compliance landscape.
2. Summarize the aims
Do interviews with all stakeholders, including IT, HR, and business unit leaders. With this approach, you’ll get comprehensive visibility of the organization’s security and business objectives to create an inclusive roadmap.
3. Evaluate the achievements
Find a way to measure success. Highlight key actions and deliverables from the projects and document the progress of each highlighted action and the deliverables produced. Communicate the value of each project through security metrics.
4. Invest in people, processes, and technology.
Don’t put all sources only in technology. Experienced security experts can protect your environment from threats invisible to programs. The point is to have people engaged in security and have automation processes for people to do what programs cannot do.
