Get ahead of security issues
Cybersecurity is always evolving, and organizations worldwide are facing an increased level of complex cyber threats. More stringent compliance regulations and digital transformation have made information security an integral part of every business.
This leaves Chief Information Security Officer’s (CISOs) and cybersecurity professionals with several challenges when it comes to ensuring their businesses are both well-protected from cyberattacks as well as compliant with new legislation.
When it seems like an impossible task to get in control of all security issues, use this guide as a shortcut to find out where to start.
Prevention and Protection Focus on what matters
Cybersecurity covers a variety of elements, all worthy of attention and budget. However, for many cybersecurity professionals the long list of action items and limited budget means you need to know and protect what matters most for your organization – your critical assets and sensitive data. Once you have identified these assets and data, you can prioritize your resources. You will need to:
Identify the risks and vulnerabilities in all the activities of your organization.
Identify the threats if you don’t mitigate the risks. Value the risks – which ones are more critical or probable?
Ensure you have an updated cybersecurity policy in place to keep your organization secure. Regardless of the policy, it is important to have all relevant stakeholders involved and to coordinate efforts throughout the entire organization to make your cybersecurity plan more effective and efficient.
Create a secure environment for dynamic working
Keep identities secure
Trusted identities are the basis for security, and many organizations are turning towards zero trust security with multi-factor authentication to ensure an identity-first cybersecurity strategy.
Ensure your organization has a comprehensive identity management approach in place to issue, manage and control identities. This will help users stay safe and secure but will also secure your machines, devices, and interactions.
These steps will increase security:
– Block all access to resources except authenticated and authorized traffic
– Have a secure on-boarding/off-boarding process
– Access control for all systems, based on SAML, O pen-ID connect or similar
Nexus tip: With the right identity management solution in place, your cybersecurity team can implement trusted digital and mobile identities that can be used to secure all people, systems, applications, and data. Digital and mobile identities make identity management easier, smoother and more user-friendly.
Introduce multi-factor authentication
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds an additional level of security to your IT environment. This authentication method ensures that
everyone is who they say they are when they attempt to log in to a device or an application that touches your network, helping to avoid security breaches and identity theft.
Username and password can be beneficial as they are technology agnostic, and a password is easy to reset if or when there is a problem. However, most of today’s application platforms are providing support for MFA such as Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, certificate-based authentication and time-based one-time password (T-OTP), to list a few examples. Support for security functions on application platforms is also commonly available.
Nexus tip: We advise removing passwords for all admin accounts and protecting them with MFA. Ideally, your cybersecurity and IT teams can minimize the overall use of passwords in the organization and transfer all users to smooth and easy-to-use MFA solutions.
Remote and mobile working
Cybersecurity professionals need to be prepared to adapt to a dynamic threat environment. As the workforce becomes more mobile and applications and operations move to the cloud, policies need to be in place to protect all scenarios of working. Addressing the following topics will be important for your cybersecurity plan:
– Device management
– Application management
– Content management
Nexus tip: Create and enforce an additional policy for remote working with strict rules to prevent potential cybercrime.
Set security measures and controls Incident Management
Having an incident management strategy in place is key to containing damage, should it happen. One of the best ways to develop an incident management strategy is by using existing standards, specifically the ISO/ IEC 27001. This standard is best known for outlining the requirements for incident management as it covers people, processes, and IT systems.
The point of incident management is that it enables you to effectively identify and manage breaches. An incident management strategy starts with the identification of incidents, typically with users logging them and also automatically generated incident logging based on pre-established conditions.
The faster your team can identify a breach, the faster you can rectify it and prevent more loss or risk.
Nexus tip: Integrate the incident handling process into IT Service Management (ITSM) systems such as ServiceNow or Atlassian Jira ServiceDesk for faster response time.
Work smarter
Automate as much as possible
Manual processes are both costly and nonsecure and are open to human error. Automation helps bring down costs and simplify work, for example with lifecycle management of identities and credentials.
With automation, you keep manual work and helpdesk issues to a minimum, and gain time to move from IT maintenance to IT development.
Nexus tip: Consider automated processes to manage identities for devices. You do not want to risk having services go down, due to forgotten renewal of certificates.
Leverage managed services
Cybersecurity is an area where you do not want to take shortcuts. For some organizations, it makes sense to leverage the expertise of an external service provider for some or all its security needs.
Outsourcing parts of your cybersecurity strategy brings many benefits including shifting the technical burden away from your organization to experts. This helps to lower costs, scale quickly and have the best and most up-to-date knowledge available for your organization.
Create a security-focused culture User Education and Awareness
Human error can lead to massive problems in your cybersecurity strategy so it is crucial to have proper training and awareness for all employees. As a cybersecurity professional you might be aware of things to look out for and how to check if emails or communications are legitimate, but not everyone in your organization will have the same training and background. Simple actions such as clicking the wrong link or opening an unverified attachment can lead to hackers gaining access to your environment.
Nexus tip: Ensure that your organization promotes a security culture, so everyone feels a part of the solution and to increase your cyber defense level.
Do not forget IoT
Secure all connected devices
Servers, printers, routers and IoT devices, as well as laptops and smartphones. Secure all endpoints in your network with public key infrastructure (PKI) based identities. It is important to cover every connected device since each unprotected connected device means a risk. If you are using a system for IT service management (ITSM), such as ServiceNow, or if you use Windows autopilot to preconfigure devices, make sure it can be integrated with your security solution.