Building an effective cyber security program in today’s environment is more challenging than ever.

A growing amount of connected devices paired with an IT network and perimeter that is more decentralized than ever due to cloud functionality and remote work, has resulted in organizations struggling to keep security operations maintained efficiently. All this, on top of a tremendous shortage of talent and resources in all things cyber security. 

If you talk to IT or Security leaders, it’s their sentiment that they are often under resourced — they’re putting out fires with no budget and no people. They are doing more with less. At Cyberium Converged Solutions we’ve seen these problems, and we’ve been that IT or Security leader on other side. That’s why we’ve made it our mission to provide support to elevate IT and security teams so that they can rise to the occasion. We like to say we’re answering the call.

We’re seeing a trend in organizations requiring outside help to implement more advanced and mature security controls. Here are some of my thoughts on the areas that need to be addressed by any organization. Overall, it’s about program maturity and continuous improvement in risk management — whether you’re a small, medium, or large business or government agency, consider addressing these five areas to harden your security posture.

1) Road mapping and KPIs – Create a cybersecurity strategy with measures of success that is tailored to your environment. Along with this, create a governance road map that allows you to implement information and cyber security best practices across the organization, and with the support of leaders OUTSIDE of your team.

2) 24×7 Managed Security Solutions – Consider using a 24×7 SOC/NOC-driven managed security service to take on key security operations functions such as firewall management, network monitoring (24×7 Managed Detection and Response).

Building and maintaining this capability internally is typically cost-prohibitive and requires a tremendous amount of resources taking your internal team away from other key operational initiatives that may be mission critical.

3)  Vulnerability Management – New vulnerabilities are being identified on a daily basis and internal IT teams do not typically have sufficient time, or resources, to keep up with patch management duties on a “just in time” basis.

As we have seen happen during major cyber breaches, many of these have happened because of basic vulnerability exploits on unpatched systems. A dedicated third-party solution that is monitoring your environment and is dedicated to this function is a critical piece of any robust cyber security program.

4)   Training – Creating a culture of cybersecurity with training and awareness is critically important. Cybersecurity touches all components of an organization; therefore, it is everyone’s responsibility. Everyone is accountable to practice good cyber hygiene.

As many have said before, the weakest link in your cyber security program is the “human factor”. Train your employees on organizational policies regarding security and privacy and run phishing simulations to increase your resiliency to a phishing attack.

5)  Incident Response, and Disaster Recovery – In cyber security, we say that it is not “if”, but “when”. While even the most mature cyber security programs may choose to accept certain risks on their environment, these are typically counter balanced with robust incident response, back-up plan, disaster recovery, and business continuity controls. An organization’s ability to respond, mitigate and recover from a cyber-attack is absolutely crucial to a complete cyber security program.

IT and Security leaders are aware of the cybersecurity problems and risks they face every day, but have difficulty addressing them due to tight budgets and inadequate resources.

Cyberium Converged Solutions has the security operations muscle and expertise to put boots on the ground to address your cybersecurity needs. Our engineers are in the security trenches everyday with IT professionals solving strategic and tactical problems to harden the security posture of organizations across country.