Proactive cyber security

Steve Whiter, Director, Appurity explains why constant threat monitoring should be key to your cyber security strategy

 

Business leaders are falling into the trap of assuming that preventative cyber security measures are too costly or resource-heavy to implement.

 

For some, their cyber defence strategy amounts to little more than wishful thinking that they won’t fall victim to a data leak or breach. Their approach is to strengthen defences here and there while hoping they never come under attack themselves.

 

These concerns are understandable: paying a security consultant thousands of pounds a day to come in and assess your business’s security posture just isn’t affordable for many SMEs. But neither are the costs of being hit with a data breach, which, according to IBM’s Cost of Data Breaches report 2022, are at an all-time high. In this context, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best is not a credible defence. 

 

When cyber attacks hit, even the most reluctant businesses are generally quick to get themselves in order and increase their security measures. A DCMS survey of IT professionals and end users from earlier this year discovered that after a breach, nearly all respondents started taking cyber security more seriously.

 

But the best time to prepare for a cyber attack is before it has happened - not afterwards. A reactive (rather than proactive) approach can cause long-term financial, operational and even reputational damage. Business leaders may learn a useful lesson, but they’ll pay for it.

 

So, how can businesses proactively strengthen their security defences and protect against potential threats – at an affordable cost?

 

Continuous security validation 

Security monitoring and validation is a technique that allows businesses to test their own security posture and measure its effectiveness. This technique is a central part of many businesses’ cyber security plans and provides businesses with the insights they need to fix any vulnerabilities or gaps in their existing security strategies.

 

But security validation methods can come with a hefty price tag, as well as internal staffing and resource requirements. 

 

In-house security monitoring offers an affordable alternative to paying external security consultants to conduct vulnerability assessments. Automated security validation platforms integrate seamlessly within your organisation’s current infrastructure, helping to mitigate against threats and highlight the weaknesses specific to your business. 

 

With real-time, focused insights into current threats, your business can divert its efforts and resources to remediating the threats specific to your business, instead of spending time (and money) on catch-all security solutions that you may or may not need. 

 

Continuous security validation has added benefits for a remote or hybrid workforce by emulating your employees’ remote endpoints and interrogating the effectiveness of their security posture. Specifically, it’s crucial for businesses with remote workforces to know when a device is compromised, so leaders can gain visibility of the real-time risk to all endpoints and understand all threats to users connected to off-premise networks.  

 

Pre-empting potential attacker behaviour in this way puts your IT and security teams one step ahead of bad actors. 

 

Evolving security strategies

Continuous security monitoring should replace the quick fix method which is implemented, forgotten, and rarely (if ever) tested. And although security patches are essential, it’s not enough to just run a few updates and call it a cyber security strategy.

 

Businesses must take that step beyond the bare minimum. That means continually checking that their security defences are working and testing all the time for vulnerabilities. This can ultimately help form the basis of a zero-trust strategic approach to cyber security.

 

Crucially, continuous validation pushes your business to make improvements and learn from its mistakes. 

 

Proactive approach to cyber security

A proactive approach to cyber security, which includes continuous security monitoring and validation, will ultimately free-up costs in the long term and give your business visibility and control over its people, data, and endpoints.

 

So, what does taking a proactive approach mean?

 

Staying on top of the evolving nature of cyber security threats and being prepared for a multitude of attack vectors is central to building a proactive approach to cyber security. This doesn’t mean diverting all your business’s resources and budget on mimicking attacker behaviour, penetration testing, and covering all bases with expensive, complex security tools and technologies.

 

What it does mean is being aware of current threats, understanding how your business might be at risk, and taking steps to protect your people and data in a targeted way. 

 

A proactive security strategy can also be the first step towards meeting certain regulatory or compliance frameworks, like the National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Essentials Plus. Such accreditation is a net benefit to your operations and even marketing activities, since a strong, compliant cyber security strategy shows your potential customers that your business is serious about combating cyber crime. 

 

Addressing your business’s vulnerability to cyber attacks should form the central pillar of your security strategy – no business should be protecting its data, people and endpoints only after an attack has occurred.

 

Secure your infrastructure, regularly test and monitor your defences, and don’t let a costly breach occur. No business leader wants to feel like their security efforts are simply too little, too late.

 

---

 

Steve Whiter is a Director of Appurity

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com