Cybersecurity Tips to Help Your Organization in 2022

With the new year upon us, there’s never been a better time to evaluate your company’s cybersecurity.

By Jeffrey J. Engle, President of Conquest Cyber

 

Recent cybersecurity breaches like the SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline attacks have illustrated the importance of cybersecurity in all organizations. If protecting your company’s cybersecurity is at the top of your New Year’s resolutions list, these ideas will have you on your way to checking off that important item!

Adopt a Risk-Based Approach to Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity threats are a problem for all business segments, not just the IT or security department. Cyber maturity requires a team effort and must start with business leadership through focus on a resilient business culture. The IT and security teams may be masters of processes, but the company’s leaders know the business’ priorities best. A proactive, risk-based approach is the only way to gain a competitive edge on potential adversaries. Business leaders must think of their cyber posture just like they do their P&L, as an indicator of business health. This outside the box approach means we can’t rely on conventional methods.

Get A Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP)

Organizations across various industries have begun to turn to managed security service providers (MSSPs) to bolster their cybersecurity response. A great MSSP acts as a trusted advisor to your organization and takes cyber hygiene and business continuity to a new level. Most MSSPs offer continuous security monitoring, threat detection and response but a great one will go outside their SLAs to keep your organization one step ahead of cyber threats with a proactive approach.

Be Adaptable, Agile, and Aware

Traditional approaches on how to fight in this digital dimension are good in theory but are doomed to fail, because conventional wisdom is predictable, and predictability is exploitable. Companies must have the ability to adapt rapidly and not just follow the rules. In that sense, organizations must be agile and aware while aiming at the end result of deterrence, defense and resiliency. Today, the typical approach often falls short of that ending and far too often one settles for security compliance. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do, years ago, but not looking out for potential new and emerging challenges. Remember, compliance significantly trails the broad realization of risk. To start that journey, our evolving processes must be rooted in consistent principles. Sun Tzu offers three key ideas that can help to identify challenges and opportunities as they form in this new battlespace. They are:

  • Know the environment. If you’re going to climb a mountain, fight a battle, solve a problem, or face adversaries of any kind, the more you know about the terrain you’re operating on, the better off you are. Knowing the environment is your starting point, and you build outward and upward from there.
  • Know the enemy. The key to success in special operations and asymmetric warfare is to be able to put yourself in the position of your adversaries without demonizing them. You must be able to see the situation through their eyes without your emotions clouding your view, because looking at it from their perspective will enable you to better predict, prepare, respond and defeat them.
  • Know yourself. It doesn’t matter how tough you are. Eventually, you’re going to run into someone who’s tougher. Once you truly understand that, it frames the way you engage in fights from that day forward. You no longer fight for sport, you fight only to win. Your survival is at stake.

Don’t Stop at Minimum Compliance Standards

While meeting CMMC compliance or other regulations is imperative and valuable for organizations, it is merely the start. Compliance standards often follow years of evaluations before they are approved. Often, by the time a compliance standard is active, it is potentially years out of date from a risk perspective.

Organizations can achieve true cyber maturity when they follow these requirements regularly and then go the extra mile by adapting programs based on what’s critical to their organization, what can hurt it and how that can happen.

Achieving and maintaining compliance, maturity and program effectiveness requires dedicated resources to stay abreast of regulatory developments, threats seen in the wild and ways to educate the entire organization on potential security problems.

Stay Consistent with Cybersecurity Tools

Every organization wants to stay up to date with the latest software tools and products. However, constantly switching between different tools to manage your cyber program could increase the likelihood of a vulnerability slipping through. Companies can build better resiliency against threats by utilizing a system to manage reporting, communication, and incident response. 

For further information contact:
Mercedes Jorge
mjorge@conquestcyber.com 

About Conquest Cyber

CONQUEST is the premier cyber resiliency software platform – enabling an ecosystem of partners and customers across critical sectors to defend against threats, get resilient and enable the US to gain a competitive edge in the battle for cyber supremacy.

Originally founded in 2008, Conquest Cyber took off under the leadership of Jeffrey J. Engle, a retired Special Operations combat veteran and highly regarded expert in adaptive risk management for critical infrastructure. We have an office in Miramar, FL and our Headquarters is in Nashville, TN.

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