SMBs Are Popular Targets for Hackers
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have become increasingly popular targets for cybercriminals. Attackers have quickly learned that SMBs, especially those in a growth phase, often do not have adequate cybersecurity solutions deployed. They may be putting more resources into product or service development without devoting sufficient resources to cybersecurity. What’s more, they may not be technology savvy or deploy the sophisticated cybersecurity solutions that large companies do. Whatever the reason, attacks on SMBs have increased dramatically. A staggering 73% of US small business owners reported a cyber-attack in 2023. This makes it imperative for small businesses to establish a security program that will grow as the business does.
Why You Need To Scale Your Cybersecurity Program
As your business grows, so does the size of your digital footprint and your cyberattack surface. You have an increasingly complex infrastructure, more endpoints, more remote working, more data to handle, more cloud-based processing, and a larger number of people to manage. All of these translate into more potential entry points for attackers and more financial, operational, and reputational risk for the organization. Unless you have a cohesive cybersecurity program that can scale along with the company, you become more susceptible to threats.
What is Scalability in Cybersecurity?
Scalability in cybersecurity means that the cybersecurity solutions in place are still able to respond to risk as the company grows. The cybersecurity point solutions the company deployed when it had 20 employees won’t provide adequate protection for the company when it has 200 employees, or 2000 employees working in multiple locations. Cybersecurity programs need to accommodate increased data volume, user activity, and complex threat vectors without compromising either company performance or security.
Having a scalable cybersecurity framework will help the security team to incorporate new tools and processes in a seamless manner as they are required. Just as the development team in a growing company will add infrastructure and applications to support its efforts, the security team must keep pace to ensure that company assets are protected.
What Are the 5 Cs of Cybersecurity?
There are five general pillars, commonly referred to as the Five Cs of a robust cybersecurity program. When addressed together, they form a holistic approach to protecting your organization from cyberattacks. Each component should be addressed as you scale your cybersecurity program. The Five Cs are Change, Compliance, Continuity, Coverage, and Cost.
- Change: Threats are evolving on a daily basis. You need to be aware of changes in threats and countermeasures to be able to deploy updates to your programs and update your procedures.
- Compliance: Your cybersecurity solutions need to meet regulatory requirements for protecting company and customer data. Compliance also can include ensuring that workers follow the company’s cybersecurity rules. This is why it’s important to make sure your employees have the proper security training.
- Continuity: In the event of a cybersecurity incident, you need a strategy for maintaining the continued operations of the organization until the incident has been resolved.
- Coverage: A comprehensive cybersecurity program needs to protect all aspects of the company’s operations. As the company grows, your cybersecurity needs to scale as well.
- Cost: How much your company spends on cybersecurity depends on budgets, but when working out budgets, you need to consider the cost of a breach versus the cost of protection. This can help you as a small business owner prioritize the right aspects to keep you protected as you grow.
What Is the 1-10-60 Rule in Cybersecurity?
As you scale your cybersecurity program, you should always have the goal of meeting the 1-10-60 Rule. This rule provides a guideline for the time it takes to respond to a cybersecurity incident. The faster the organization responds, the less potential there is for serious damage. The rule is:
- 1 Minute to detect: Be able to rapidly detect a security incident. Automated systems can help.
- 10 Minutes to Investigate: Be able to gather as much information as is necessary to start dealing with the incident.
- 60 Minutes to Resolve or Remediate: Be able to resolve the problem or contain the threat and start recovery.
Companies that don’t pay enough attention to the 1-10-60 Rule are at risk of having long remediation times. The best companies with strong cybersecurity postures have programs and processes in place that strive to achieve these goals.
How to Scale Your Cybersecurity Program
There are many ways for SMBs to achieve scalability in cybersecurity programs. Just how you do it will depend on your company’s organizational structure, infrastructure, and business environment. But there are some techniques and processes that good programs have in common. Here are some that you should consider as you develop your scalable cybersecurity program.
Get Senior Management Buy-In
Before you even start planning what tools and processes to deploy and how to organize your team, it’s essential that senior management be on board. If senior management isn’t in agreement with the CISO, you have the all-too-real potential for continuous battles over resources, staffing, and the direction and responsibilities of the security team. Cybersecurity goals need to demonstrate that they align with company business, financial, and operational goals. Security cannot be an afterthought. With the number of attacks and threats from hackers, it needs to be at the forefront of company growth plans.
Understand Your Systems and Evaluate Configurations
If you don’t know what systems you have, then you won’t know how to protect them. So another preliminary step in scaling your program is to take inventory of your entire infrastructure, including network, computers, applications, etc., and understand what the growth plans are for them. Pay close attention to how everything is configured, especially cloud applications. Continuously check for unpatched systems and exposed credentials. Misconfigurations and unpatched systems, which could remain open for months, are a common attack vectors for hackers.
Embrace Continuous Monitoring
Cybercriminals like to make attacks after business hours when they suspect that security teams are lightly staffed, or not staffed at all. In 2020, 76% of all ransomware infections occur outside working hours. The only way to ensure that your company is covered 24/7 is to deploy automated tools that can monitor your systems continuously. These tools will help you respond promptly to any threats that are detected any time of day.
Automate Everything You Can
In addition to automated scanners, there are other ways to replace manual and repetitive work. Replace spreadsheets and manual questionnaires for evaluating vendors and third parties with automated programs. Deploy Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools that can automatically collect, analyze, and respond to security incidents
Cybersecurity That Grows Along with the Organization
Your cybersecurity team needs to grow as the company grows and the organization’s infrastructure becomes larger and more complex. One guideline used by many companies is to try to grow at a rate just below the rest of the company. As the team grows, it will evolve to have a mix of security personnel to include expertise in such areas as application security, network security, and analysis. And you’ll need to hire leaders who understand that team building is just as important as managing day-to-day security issues. You may find it advantageous to outsource with a cybersecurity partner to fill gaps in expertise.
Consider Strategic Partnerships and Third-Party Solutions
When your company was small, it may have been possible to perform all necessary cybersecurity functions in-house. This becomes more difficult as the company grows. Consider entering strategic partnerships and deploying third-party solutions to help the company grow safely. Identify partners who align with your business strategy. They can provide additional services and expertise to add to your cybersecurity toolbox. For example, an external penetration testing company can perform a simulated attack on your systems in an environment and conditions like what a hacker would encounter in the real world.
Employee Cybersecurity Training
The onboarding program for new employees should instill the idea that everyone has a share of responsibility for the company’s cybersecurity. This includes non-technical as well as technical personnel including cybersecurity awareness training. Stress the need for using strong passwords, keeping an eye out for and reporting suspicious emails and texts, proper handling of physical material, and following all security processes. Ensure that vendors and third parties know and follow your cybersecurity rules.
Adopt Useful Cybersecurity Metrics
You need a focused set of metrics to gauge how well your cybersecurity program is scaling to avoid wasting time and budget. There is a wide variety of helpful metrics and which ones you adopt should be based on your business and your cybersecurity program. Here are just a few considerations that give an indication of your program’s scalability:
- Time to integrate new solutions: How long does it take you to deploy new technology or update existing tools to deal with emerging threats? How long does it take you to update existing processes?
- Identifying bottlenecks: How long does it take you to respond to a security incident?
- Identifying and filling skills gaps: How long does it take you to upskill your team or bring in new team members after you have identified a gap in expertise?
- Time to adapt: How long does it take your team to adapt to new operational rules, compliance regulations, and company best practices?
If any of these numbers are going up, it may indicate a problem with your ability to scale. We recommend
You are not locked into the metrics that you choose at the outset. You may find along your small business’s growth journey that some no longer give you useful information. Eliminate those to reduce costs and time needed for analysis. You may also discover that you need to add other metrics that will improve your ability to assess your operation’s scalability.
Provide the Tools Your Team Needs
The best cybersecurity team will find it difficult—if not impossible—to be successful if they don’t have the right tools to do their job. Look for tools that can continue to be effective as you grow. Tools with size or capacity limits should be discarded in favor of tools that can scale. There are many different types of cybersecurity tools and solutions, but most fall into one of these categories:
- Endpoint protection: Endpoints, such as workstations, mobile devices, remote devices, etc., are popular attack points for hackers.
- Cloud protection: Organizations are using cloud computing more to increase flexibility and resource scaling. Don’t assume that data and applications running in the cloud are automatically protected.
- Identity protection: Hackers use stolen identities to infiltrate corporate systems. Users need to be authenticated and authorized before they are granted access.
- Web protection: Online properties need to be protected from unauthorized access and modification.
Management tools: Enhance your ability to resolve incidents and assess operational efficiency with solutions such as SIEM and MDR (Managed Detection and Response).
Be Proactive
A growing company will keep adding infrastructure, applications, and endpoints to support the business—potentially alongside more vendors and third-party partners. While this growth is natural, it greatly expands your attack surface. Make sure that you are aware of your company’s expansion plans so you can assess how it will affect the organization’s attack surface and cybersecurity requirements. Being proactive, you’ll be able to add personnel or technology and make changes in processes and procedures as they are needed.
Keep Evolving
We all know that there is no such thing as a perfect cybersecurity defense. Still, it’s not a question of if you will incur a cybersecurity incident but when. As your company evolves, threats keep evolving, too. There will always be new and more sophisticated threats and new attack methods. So your cybersecurity program needs to be flexible and evolve even faster. You need to constantly be aware of the cybersecurity landscape as it applies to your organization. Using this knowledge you can make changes to your cybersecurity program to continue to provide the best protection for your company.
Protect Your Business Today
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