publive-image

Building a Strong Cybersecurity Program: Protect Your Organization from Emerging Threats.

What is a Cybersecurity Strategy?

A cybersecurity risk assessment is designed to give you a comprehensive view of the potential cyber threats to your business, and how you can manage associated risks.
Threats vary by industry, so a risk assessment a deepening is the first step and key to understanding the gaps and weaknesses in your existing systems and procedures, which is an important part of the journey to stay safe.

To understand overall risk, security risk assessments can help businesses identify, allocate, and map their data and information assets based on value. This enables companies to prioritize and allocate resources accordingly to ensure that cybersecurity measures if implemented are efficient and effective.

Without a proper risk assessment, your business may not know where the challenges lie, and what aspects of cybersecurity you need to prioritize and invest in to prevent harm.

Define and establish security goals

An important step in developing a cybersecurity strategy is to ensure that it aligns with your larger business objectives. A possible way to do this is to define security objectives that align with your business objectives, and should not be compromised. Developing safety goals can be challenging, however, the process can be made easier by asking the following questions.

Assess the level of your technology against Industry best practices

An important part of developing a cybersecurity strategy is to evaluate the technology for compliance with current best practices. With the rapidly evolving tactics, strategies, and tactics of malicious perpetrators, the technology in any organization must be up to date on the latest patches and security updates. Businesses will be vulnerable to cyberattacks as the technology becomes obsolete, for example, systems that do not receive updates open to network compromise leave because intruders can easily gain access

Once technological advancements are aligned with industry standards, it is important to ensure the availability of resources and dedicate themselves to maintaining the technology and supporting the project. For example, in a zero-day attack, resources must be ready and available to deal with the threat and mitigate any risk

Choosing a Cybersecurity Framework

A cybersecurity framework is, in essence, a framework of standards, guidelines, and best practices for managing risks that arise in the digital world. There are several cybersecurity programs that a company can choose from to help guide its overall cybersecurity strategy. Depending on the nature of your business you may need to adhere to certain policies e.g. The PCI DSS framework is important for merchants that process and store cardholder data and non-compliance can have legal consequences.

Review existing security policies and create new ones

A security policy is a document that outlines how a company plans to protect its physical and information technology. It should be updated to reflect any changes in technology, vulnerabilities, and security requirements.

Part of this step includes reviewing existing security measures and creating new ones that were lacking and are now needed. As one of the biggest risks in cybersecurity is an organization’s employees, careless actions often lead to data breaches For example, security measures related to valid passwords and user rights of people of participatory processes are essential to inform and support employees on high standards of information security

These security measures must be implemented and every employee in an organization must be responsible for the protection of information. Regular and mandatory safety training and policies can help enforce these policies.

Risk Management

An important part of creating a cybersecurity strategy is preparing for the worst, however strong your cybersecurity measures are, there is still a chance that your business falls prey to a cyber attack or data breach. Identifying the potential risks to your organization’s information security beforehand is a good way to mitigate the repercussions associated with an attack. As part of your risk management plan, the following policies can be implemented to ensure that your organization is adopting a proactive approach toward its cybersecurity:

• Data privacy policy - outlines how corporate data should be handled and secured properly
• Data protection policy - covers how the sensitive data belonging to customers, employees, suppliers, and other       third/fourth   parties should be handled
• Retention policy - details where data should be stored and for how long
• Incident response plan - outlines in detail the steps that need to be taken in the event of a security incident

Implementation and Evaluation

Now that your cybersecurity strategy has been planned out and policies have been created, it is time for implementation. Once the cybersecurity strategy has been implemented by your information security or project management team, it is important to recognize the need for continued support and evaluation. Vulnerabilities will continue to evolve as threat actors discover new methods of attack, therefore your cybersecurity strategy needs to be continuously monitored and tested to make sure it matches the existing threat environment.

As upholding the cybersecurity strategy is the responsibility of the entire organization key stakeholders must be identified and held accountable for oversight. In addition to this, an annual risk assessment can help identify and fill in any gaps that may grow as threats evolve. Feedback received from both internal and external stakeholders can be a good way of receiving insight on how to best improve an existing cybersecurity strategy.