Businesses of all sizes must have robust and proactive IT security strategies as hackers continue to innovate new cyber threats. Their botnets (think Dyn incident late 2016) and ransomware (think Popcorn Time) are reaching new lows of insidious behavior, taking advantage of the increasingly integrated and social nature of our technology.
As with many things in business, however, it’s easier said than done to come up with a strategy that can cover all your company’s bases 24/7. You should account for all aspects of your organization including, but not limited to, people’s training, third-party partnerships, and of course, the hardware and software that make up your security information and event management (SIEM).
The best IT security strategy is one that will cover your company for the long-term, and that means devising a strategy that is adaptable. We’re all quite aware in 2017 of how fast technology is racing ahead and changing at a breakneck pace. The key to successful security management is gauging what gaps are particularly critical for your individual company. Check out the three tips below for a kick start on your path to finding the perfect fit for your company’s long-term strategy.
1. Security Testing and Assessments
Engaging with a managed security services provider (MSSP), like Foresite, that has decades of experience in assessment and helping companies customize security strategies to scale means you have several options for risk assessment.
With mission-critical security testing, you can check in-depth from the top down which areas of your enterprise need the most attention. If you have a hunch that your web applications could be the weakest link in your IT security, MSSPs like Foresite have ways to reverse-engineer potential cyberattacks to see how easy it would be to penetrate your computer systems and networks. Penetration testing isn’t limited to software, however.
Working with expert security consultants, your company can pinpoint whether it’s your current security best practices that are falling short or even your vendors and business associates who need to beef up their practices to better facilitate your secure information flow.
Hackers are crafty and relentless: they’ll eventually discover potential foxholes in your network if you don’t identify vulnerabilities quickly.
2. Security Device Management
The way that companies, especially SMBs and mid-tier enterprises, approach security device management is due for a change. Often, smaller companies fall into a trap of relying on a grand investment in SIEM tools that are not vigilantly monitored or that aren’t tailored to their companies’ cybersecurity needs.
Being over-dependent on the reputation of premium-solutions vendors leads executives to often allocate a ton of funding towards tools and products for security alerting that become shelf-ware if their employees don’t have experts on deck to extract optimal value from these SIEM tools.
For a long-term information security services strategy to work, you need to have real-time security device alerts to prevent or mitigate cyber threats. Your company can’t afford to be reactive when mission-critical data could be compromised.
3. Comprehensive Compliance
Lastly, to keep your best security practices agile and updated, you need to have a very clear overview of how inline your practices are with compliance standards and regulations. But let’s be honest: It can be a struggle to maintain complete compliance.
Think about even just a few of the acronyms a company may have to contend with: PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX, GLBA, NERC, NIST 800-171, and more. Unless you have expert consultants in your departments who can make sense of all the complexities of compliance and how they affect your SIEM tools’ efficacies, you’re going to need help from an MSSP. And for MSSPs like Foresite, complete compliance is an art and a science. Having consultants who know compliance and SIEM inside and out ties your long-term strategy together and ensures that it’s watertight.
