Organizations with any serious level of online presence must have a proper cybersecurity management plan in place. In the ever-evolving technological landscape, cybersecurity management should be one of the most crucial topics among IT teams.
Cybersecurity management is the process of overseeing and protecting your organization’s cyber assets. It involves everything from developing a comprehensive security strategy to actively using tools to monitor and remove vulnerabilities. In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into the world of cybersecurity management. Why is it important? What tools do we use to do so? And what are the industry-standard practices in cybersecurity management?
This post will answer all of the above questions, and hopefully leave you with a better understanding of how to manage cybersecurity in your org while maintaining security-minded standards and practices.
What Is Cybersecurity Management?
Cybersecurity management is the process of safeguarding your cyber assets and guaranteeing their integrity. Any act taken that relates to the management of your cybersecurity resources, be it downloading new monitoring software or taking inventory of your assets, can be considered cybersecurity management.
Developing new cybersecurity strategies and creating procedures to ensure the confidentiality of data is also part of the cybersecurity management process.
Why Is Cybersecurity Management Important?
Cybersecurity management is important to companies for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, there’s the obvious fact that a solid cybersecurity framework ensures the protection of valuable company data. Login credentials and customer data are all regular targets for cybercriminals, and good cybersecurity management makes it harder for bad actors to access that information.
As a result of this, companies deemed to have a poor cybersecurity structure are avoided by consumers. In 2013 and 2014, popular media company Yahoo was subject to two huge security breaches. The company was supposed to be sold to Verizon, but the breach resulted in the company losing $350 million in value and needing to pay $117 million in settlements across 23 lawsuits.
Cybersecurity management is also a regulatory concern. Government regulators set security standards regarding customer data protection that companies are not allowed to fall below. These include standards for up-to-date security tools and utilizing data encryption.
Who Is in Charge of a Company’s Cybersecurity? Introducing the CISO
The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is the official role given to the individual in charge of managing an organization’s cybersecurity. They are tasked with designing the organization’s cybersecurity strategy, leading the response to security incidents, conducting risk assessments, and ensuring compliance with cybersecurity regulations. Furthermore, the Organization’s CISOs are also responsible for training staff on cybersecurity and generating awareness about best practices within the organization.
In some organizations, the CISO may also act as the Chief Technical Officer, who is in charge of the company’s overall technological framework.
Layers of Cybersecurity Management
Cybersecurity management is a multifaceted and layered process. It starts with risk assessment, responding to incidents, complying with regulations, and much more. Let’s inspect some aspects of the cybersecurity management process.
1. Risk Management
Risk management and assessment is arguably the first step in the cybersecurity management process. It involves analyzing a company’s cybersecurity architecture, finding points of weakness, and knowing how to fix them. It also involves deciding which vulnerabilities are the most important to the organization based on the organization’s risk tolerance and goals.
2. Incident Response
But what happens when an incident does arise? That’s where incident response comes in. A good incident response team can quickly find the cause of the breach and fix it. Incident response services involves not only responding to incidents but also creating contingency plans for various scenarios and conducting post-incident analysis to strengthen security.
3. Compliance Management
Cybersecurity management professionals need to ensure that their organizations are meeting federal and state regulations for their industry. This involves ensuring that there is proper documentation and conducting audits.
4. Security Awareness and Training
Cybersecurity management professionals must stay up-to-date with regard to the latest developments in IT and train regular staff members regarding cybersecurity best practices.
Threat Landscape
There are a variety of attack vectors that hackers use to get into organizations’ systems. The most well-known of these is malware. These days, malware is used as a catch-all term for any program that includes viruses, trojans, spyware, and ransomware.
Ransomware, a particularly devious type of malware, locks important files and doesn’t give the user access until they pay a ransom to the attacker.
Phishing attacks and other types of social engineering are also commonly used by attackers.
In spite of malware’s notoriety, however, the most crucial threat may be company insiders intentionally or unintentionally leaking sensitive information on or offline. This is why companies must put proper access control measures in place and ensure that workers are trained to discern possible cyber attacks.
In 2020, a Nigerian scam group was arrested by the FBI and sentenced to prison on two counts of fraud, worth millions of dollars, by using business compromise emails (a type of phishing attack where criminals send invoices to companies using spoofed emails and account details). Before this, the group defrauded hundreds of organizations, including major banks and law firms. This proves the need for proper staff security awareness training regarding possible attack vectors.
Developing a Cyber Security Management Strategy
An effective cyber security management strategy is the cornerstone of every organization’s security architecture. So how do you go about this? It involves several steps:
1. Assess Current Security Posture
The first step is to assess your current architecture. Identify vulnerabilities and potential exploits within your system. Find common weaknesses with your particular software and run tests on networks for exploit proofing. Ask your security team members to run penetration tests and simulate phishing attacks on your infrastructure. It will help you find many hidden vulnerabilities before malicious actors can find and exploit them themselves.
2. Identify Critical Assets
You have a limited number of resources at your disposal. Not every asset requires maximum protection. There is an order of priority and threat severity levels to be concerned of.
Conduct a business impact analysis to assess the potential impact of different risks.
Keep your organization’s goals in mind. Define which assets are the most critical first. You should also consider industry regulations.
Banks invest heavily in encryption software to secure card data; firewalls prevent unauthorized access to their confidential networks. As banks go more digital, regulations change and permissions tighten.
Hospitals are focusing more on access controls. Healthcare firms need to keep their customer data safe, secure, and private. Medical regulations also mandate that these records are made public, whenever hospitals suffer from a security breach. This is done to ensure that customers stay informed and protected and to reduce the scope of damages.
3. Implement Technology and Train Staff
Know your goals and regulatory requirements. Your organization now needs to invest in proper technologies to achieve said objectives. You may consider building firewalls or using strong encryption keys (like AES-256). Alternatively, you could invest in on-site VPNs or custom tunneling software.
Don’t invest until your workers know how to use these solutions. Focus more on staff security awareness training. Educate members on internet safety practices, inform them on how to spot phishing emails, create strong passwords, and incorporate essential cyber hygiene practices.
4. Establish an Incident Response Plan
It’s almost impossible to cover all bases. However, a proper cyber security management strategy is able to identify weaknesses in architecture. It outlines procedures to be taken for multiple threat scenarios and security events. This includes plans on how to communicate with stakeholders regarding data leaks.
5. Monitor, Test, and Update
When all is done, it’s time to implement your strategy. Observability software should be used to continuously monitor your organization’s network. SentinelOne is an industry-leading monitoring and protection software that can scan for network abnormalities and automatically respond to them.
As incidents arise, your IT team should be able to analyze these and make improvements accordingly.
Cybersecurity Controls
When managing cybersecurity, there are a few key areas to watch out for. These include:
Network Security
This broad category deals with the protection of computer networks, using tools to stop intruders from getting in. A few tools offer this, including:
- Firewalls: Devices or software that monitor and control incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules.
- Intrusion detection systems (IDS): Tools that detect anomalies within a network and alert admins. When coupled with intrusion prevention systems (IPS), such as firewalls, they create a powerful defense against network intruders,
- Virtual private networks (VPNs): Secure connections over the internet that protect data privacy and integrity.
- Segmentation: Dividing a network into segments to limit access and contain potential breaches.
Endpoint Security
Endpoint security involves securing individual devices. It includes computers, mobile devices, servers, and any other devices connected to your organization’s network. To do this, a few measures are employed, such as:
- Antivirus software: Programs designed to detect and remove malware from devices.
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR): Solutions like SentinelOne can monitor endpoints to detect unusual activity and stop threats as they occur.
Data Protection
Data protection focuses on safeguarding data from unauthorized access, loss, or corruption. Its key components include:
- Backups: Regularly backing up data ensures that you can easily recover lost or damaged files.
- Access controls: Implementing user access controls ensures that only those with proper permission can access your files.
- Encryption: Encrypting data makes the data uninterpretable without a key, protecting it from use if accessed by unauthorized individuals.
Application Security
Application security involves ensuring that vulnerable applications can not be exploited to attack your network. Steps taken to ensure this include:
- Secure development practices: Incorporating security at every stage of the software development life cycle (SDLC).
- Application testing: Regularly conducting security assessments, such as static and dynamic analysis, to identify vulnerabilities.
- Web application firewalls (WAFs): Tools that protect web applications by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between a web application and the internet.
Benefits of Cyber Security Management
There are several benefits of cyber security management. A detailed cyber security management plan makes it easier to respond to threats and safeguard your company’s information. It also makes your organization comply with regulatory guidelines, saving you from potential fines and legal fees.
Customers usually avoid companies with a poor cybersecurity track record. When Yahoo! announced the 2013 and 2014 data breaches to the public in 2017, they lost about a million daily users. Their market value also dropped significantly.
A proper cyber security management plan ensures that your business is prepared for possible threats and ensures that your organization continues to operate smoothly.
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Get a DemoWrapping Up: Cyber Security Management Is Crucial
As our world becomes more globally interconnected, the cybersecurity landscape grows in complexity. Every organization needs a comprehensive plan in place to ensure their continued safety and security. We have highlighted the benefits of cyber security management practices, why they’re necessary, and how to go about them.
We hope that you have discovered a few tools you can use in your cyber security management journey. Whatever your business goals are, remember that SentinelOne can give you confidence. It will help you pursue them and keep your assets secure.
FAQs
Cybersecurity management is the process of overseeing and protecting your organization’s cyber assets. It involves everything from developing a comprehensive security strategy to actively using tools to monitor and remove vulnerabilities.
Risk management in cybersecurity involves analyzing your cybersecurity infrastructure for potential vulnerabilities and working to mitigate those vulnerabilities or, if possible, eliminate them altogether.
Cybersecurity managers design an organization’s cybersecurity strategy, leading the response to security incidents, conducting risk assessments, and ensuring compliance with cybersecurity regulations. They also train staff members regarding best practices for cybersecurity. In many companies, the lead cybersecurity manager is known as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
Every organization should have a detailed cybersecurity strategy, including plans for potential security upgrades and action steps in case of a security breach. Such a plan should be the cornerstone of every organization’s security architecture.