Client Architect, Networking
Most business leaders have a plan for growth, operations, and customers. However, many businesses still rely on legacy tools and processes that are already in place when it comes to cybersecurity. As budgets get cut and the cost of doing business increases, many security leaders are left hoping that what they have will be ‘good enough’ for just a while longer.
Unfortunately, hope doesn’t get you very far in the cybersecurity world. Cyber adversaries don’t care how big you are, whether you’re a 5-person firm, a mid-size company with a few hundred employees, or a large enterprise; if you’ve got data, you’re a target.
The Hidden Cost of Complexity
Over the years, many businesses have responded to growing threats by layering on tools such as endpoint protection, email filtering, backup systems, detection tools and many others. Some of these tools are acquired as part of a plan to build out a solid security posture. Other tools are quickly implemented, often immediately after a serious attack has affected the business.
In a Dark Reading article, the author correctly points out that most companies don’t know the security debt they actually have. In fact, Gartner states that cybersecurity teams manage and run an average of 43 security tools, and some have over 100. Managing, operating, and maintaining many tools often overwhelms security and IT teams and can create blind spots that attackers are eager to exploit.
Frameworks Bring Focus
The good news: There are many established frameworks that you can use to build a solid foundation on which to build your cybersecurity plan and posture.
Frameworks such as NIST CSF, ISO/IEC 27001, SOC2, and others offer a structured approach to help you build out a sustainable and scalable plan on which you can build your security policies, procedures, processes, and much more. Think of it as the blueprint for your cybersecurity strategy. These frameworks help you:
- Identify your most important risks (risk assessment)
- Prioritize what to tackle first (risk mitigation)
- Create clear roles, policies, and practices (clear documentation)
- Create auditability (compliance)
- Align everyone, from leadership to the front lines, around a shared plan
Think of it this way:
When you create and/or are building your business, you created a business plan (and, if necessary, modified it along the way) and followed it to the success your business is currently enjoying. No plan equals no business. So why would any business think differently about cybersecurity?
The advantage IT and Security team leaders have today is that there are many well-established frameworks already in place to get you started. A strong cybersecurity foundation, built around an established, mature framework can help you to build a cybersecurity program and posture that not only fits your business’s needs today but will scale logically and cost-effectively as your business scales.
It’s About Business Risk
These frameworks aren’t just there to help your business pass industry or business-specific certifications; they are there to help the IT and Security leaders, along with the C-suite, find areas of risk that must be addressed and put them in a logical, trackable format.
Frameworks help businesses answer questions that are often critical to ensuring the business continues to succeed. Some of those may be:
- What is our sensitive data (e.g., intellectual property, go-to-market strategies, etc)
- Where is our sensitive data?
- How do we protect the data and ourselves from cybersecurity threats?
- How do we respond if we are the victim of a cyber attack?
- Do our policies, procedures, practices, tools, and staff meet our cybersecurity needs today? Will they tomorrow?
None of these are or can be the sole responsibility of the IT/Security teams. These are business-critical questions, and every leader should have a plan for managing them.
Start Where You Are, Then Build
As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither is a cybersecurity posture. It takes time, effort, money, and a competent team to build out the components your business will need to create, augment, and sustain a solid cybersecurity posture.
At DataEndure, we often work with businesses that have grown organically or through M&A activities. That usually means a mix of systems, tools, policies, leadership, and inherited processes are mashed together to create a complex, difficult to manage, operate, and maintain Information Security Management System (ISMS). We help businesses bring order to that chaos. Our methodologies are time-tested and constantly updated as the threat landscape continues to evolve.
The first step is always the same: understand what you have.
Then we help you map that to what you need based on your business strategies and goals. That may mean revamping your toolsets or tool strategies, defining new and/or updating outdated security policies, or just teaching you how to fit what you’re doing today, and what you want to do tomorrow, into one of these frameworks. One, some, or all of these will lead to shifting to a managed security service model that lightens the load of your IT/Security teams and defines a very clear path forward.
More often than not, you don’t have to rip and replace everything all at once (translation: high-cost evolutions). We help you define a strategic, logical path forward so that costs and efforts can be spread out over time and in order of priority (critical to ‘nice to have’).
Move Forward with Confidence
Implementing proper cybersecurity is a never-ending process. As the threats continue to evolve, so must your business and cybersecurity posture. But it also doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With the right framework, you can build a foundation that keeps your business strong, secure, and ready to grow well into the future.
As the saying goes, ‘it takes a village.’ Implementing and maintaining a strong cybersecurity posture is a lot of work, and a strong partner can help guide you along the way. You don’t have to figure it out alone. Reach out to us, and let’s talk about how DataEndure can help you get cybersecurity right.