Cybersecurity does not have a one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on how it operates and the rules of its industry, every company has a different approach to data storage and risk management.
Organizations face many potential cybersecurity threats as they pursue digital transformation. Even the most well-funded businesses are unable to eliminate all of these risks. Cyber security has dominated the news recently as cyber-attacks have increased alarmingly. Every organization has prioritized cybersecurity due to remote work, accelerating digital transformation, and more intelligent threat actors.
Earlier, a comprehensive cybersecurity program was a nice-to-have for companies attempting to stay ahead of the competition; however, it is now necessary for any organization with a digital presence. Trust and openness are non-negotiable factors when B2B customers select vendors to store their data.
The effective response involves validating and ranking the risks that greatly impact the company. Security and risk management leaders must hone their strategies to recognize and respond to important current and emerging cyber threats across the spectrum.
In planning and implementing security initiatives in 2023, CISOs should consider significant security technology and infrastructure trends. They can take the following steps to mitigate threats in each of these areas:
Automating security operations will improve capabilities
Although security monitoring technologies have advanced, security monitoring takes much time. Increased automation through Security Orchestration, Automation, And Response (SOAR) tools and integration into existing devices makes scaling up current security operations staff easier.
Based on anticipated measurable improvements in security operations, CISOs can assess the effectiveness of their automation strategy. Consider whether automation could improve, speed up, or reduce the cost of something firms already do. Use cases should be amenable to automation and present a significant enough price to justify automation.
Security professionals must prioritize data classification, or they risk regulatory consequences.
Even though data handling procedures vary by industry and data type (PII, healthcare, financial, etc.), all organizations require a consistent approach to data classification. Without it, businesses risk shutting down operations if employees accidentally handle customer data.
Positively, companies that haven’t formalized their data classification strategies now have the chance to do so and, in doing so, put more efficient controls in place. There aren’t enough businesses that know where their data is or how to organize it. The security team cannot develop a solution independently because developing a broad enough policy to cover all of a company’s data is challenging.
However, there are best practices that can assist organizations in setting up a procedure to stop the improper handling of data. Keep classification simple at first. Standard categories restricted, sensitive, internal, and public data offer simple guidelines for classifying data across an organization.
Second, organizations should consider the data type risk when mapping data protection controls to classification standards. Many businesses struggle to rank the relative risks associated with various data types, but security teams can create effective data protection protocols with the right tools and a well-rounded strategy.
Finally, include important parties in the data classification process as early as possible. To successfully address this challenge, an organization must make data security everyone’s responsibility. The organization’s legal department, security team, and individual data owners must be involved to ensure that data complies with regulations.
A “Data Everywhere” World Will Require Data-Centric Security.
Data is exploding, particularly as businesses use data-intensive artificial intelligence technologies at an accelerated rate. There is very little visibility into this data because many organizations have not made keeping track of it a top priority. Unknown data risks are lurking in this dark data.
Dark data visibility, classification, and loss prevention tools can help shield against breaches and improper use. Cybersecurity leaders must consider a targeted approach for each business use case when implementing a protection strategy. Since it’s crucial to understand where data is and how users and machines access different applications and data sources, discovery and visibility are essential.
Research enterprise digital rights management, or EDRM, to safeguard data outside the corporate perimeter. Through a cryptographic, an identity, and a granular usage control element, EDRM solutions offer fine-grained and identity-aware control over persistently protected information. Even after sharing, EDRM manages, tracks, and revokes rights to data.
DevSecOps will become crucial to business
Cybersecurity teams can create a much bigger app surface by deploying application programming interfaces, and due to their continued growth and diversity, attacks may be reduced. Organizations must consider the secure creation and deployment of APIs and applications a business imperative. Security can be automated into the application delivery process using DevSecOps techniques.
By encouraging a DevSecOps mind-set and integrating security into development and automation, CISOs can stay ahead of this trend. Integrate security and openness into the infrastructure for delivering software. Understanding what an application is and how vulnerabilities may affect organizational risk depend on this knowledge.
New architectural styles will simplify security
Since it can be difficult to understand what security features products have and how they apply to various environments and services, understanding how to overlay security controls onto enterprise IT systems is becoming increasingly difficult. In response to this trend, IT security vendors are developing unified cybersecurity platforms known as Cybersecurity Mesh Architectures, or CSMAs.
To implement security products that adhere to CSMA principles, CISOs must collaborate with their teams. Use zero-trust architecture as well to improve security as a whole. Consolidate and converge security control architecture to make it simpler. To enhance real-time insights and risk mitigation, tooling consolidation centered around intelligent analytics, decision-making, and orchestration increases the synergy between point tools.
Also Read: Leading Machine Learning Applications in Cybersecurity
Automation will both close and widen the security skills gap
Cybersecurity experts think the labor shortage impacts organizations’ capacity to secure networks and information systems. Nearly one-third of cybersecurity professionals intend to change careers in the future, which will further exacerbate the labor shortage. Organizations have embraced automated security tools to address the shortage of security talent.
Although these tools reduce workload and costs, managing them requires specific expertise. While automation might close the current security skills gap, it might also widen it because it calls for a level of specialized knowledge that many security professionals lack.
Organizations must provide employees with the appropriate training and development opportunities as they implement automated tools so that they can use them efficiently. Not automation, but people fall short. Strategically implementing new technology and investing in IT staff upskilling will make security departments more resilient to security threats and increase employee engagement and loyalty.
Self-paced workshops on using automation tools facilitated in-person training opportunities to promote team collaboration, and low-code/no-code training opportunities can all be included in upskilling initiatives.
Cybersecurity does not have a one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on how it operates and the rules of its industry, every company has a different approach to data storage and risk management. Businesses cannot afford to take a chance with cybersecurity as they navigate a volatile financial environment. When a company can least afford a financial hit, a data breach means both reputational and monetary damages that have a significant impact on the bottom line.
As a result, the CISO’s role assumes greater significance and calls for strong leadership in an environment that is getting more complicated this year and also in the future.
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