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The goal of cybersecurity is to ensure your organization has the right policies, processes, and procedures in place so you can react quickly enough to stop a breach before it impacts your business. To achieve this goal, there are a number of things you can do on an ongoing basis:
Conduct a gap analysis
A gap analysis is a structured method for identifying the weaknesses in your cybersecurity program. It helps you prioritize areas where investments can be made to improve your overall security posture.
The first step in conducting a gap analysis is to select which components of cybersecurity readiness will be evaluated, such as access management and vulnerability management. Once these are selected, determine what elements need to be considered for each component by asking questions such as:
- What are our current capabilities?
- What capabilities do we need?
- How could we achieve those capabilities?
Next, identify gaps between what is currently being done and what needs to be accomplished by answering these questions:
- How far behind are we on our goals? Do we have any gaps at all or is everything covered? If there are gaps, why do they exist? And lastly: why did no one notice before now that there was something wrong with this picture?
Identify the risks to your organization
This step is where you start to make a list of threats and vulnerabilities that could affect your organization’s security. You need to understand what might cause harm to your business or its data and take into consideration how severe those impacts would be.
For example, if an attacker was able to access customer credit card information through an internal employee portal on the company network, this would be considered a risk because it would have a significant impact on our customers’ trust in us as well as on our revenue stream for future purchases from them.
Once you’ve identified these risks and their potential impact(s), you can then move on to identifying how they can be mitigated.
Understand your current security posture
As you begin to understand your current security posture, it’s important to identify the gaps and risks. This will help determine what you need to do next. Some questions that can help with this step include:
- Which devices are connected?
- What data is stored on those devices?
- Where is the data being stored?
- How often are these devices updated with patches or firmware updates?
Create an improvement plan
When it comes to improving your cybersecurity, creating a plan of action is an important step. Once you have identified your goals and how those goals align with your strategic plan, you can begin to develop an actionable improvement plan.
The next step involves building out this plan in detail so that all stakeholders understand its purpose and their roles in achieving it. The best way to do this is usually through workshops or meetings where each group member has ample opportunity for discussion and consensus building around ideas, proposals, and development strategies.
It is also important that these meetings be documented somewhere so as not to lose track of progress over time (and so that others who may join later on know where they stand). Finally, once the plan has been developed and agreed upon by everyone involved—including the leadership it can be implemented.
Implement the plan
Implementation is the most important part of the plan. You can have a well-formulated, well-written document, but if you don’t actually implement it, your organization won’t be any better off. Implementing a cybersecurity readiness plan will take time and resources, so it’s important to make sure that both are available before moving forward with implementation.
There will be challenges during implementation: Many organizations underestimate how difficult this process will be.
Many factors need to be considered when implementing a cybersecurity readiness plan—such as budgeting for additional staff or resources—and these factors may require changes to business policies or procedures that may not necessarily be popular among employees (e.g., increased background checks).
The key here is finding ways to communicate with everyone impacted by the changes being made so they understand why these are necessary and how they’ll benefit from them in the long run.
Monitor the plan and make adjustments as needed
Monitoring your plan is an ongoing activity and should be built into the development of your cybersecurity readiness plan. In addition, it is important to understand that monitoring will reveal any gaps between what you are doing and where you need to be in terms of cybersecurity readiness.
Conclusion
The most important thing is to start with a clear picture of where you currently stand and then create an improvement plan. It’s also important to understand that no organization will ever be 100% ready, so it’s crucial that companies continually monitor their security posture and make adjustments as needed.
META TITLE: What is Cybersecurity readiness and how do you evaluate it ?
META Description: How can you measure your organization’s readiness for a future with an increasingly aggressive threat landscape? Stop guessing and start assessing!
