The Cybersecurity Roadmap to a Safer Future

Stephen Nardone
Tim Allen

Organizations all over the globe are challenged with combating the massive increase in cyberattacks head on. Whether it be nation- or state-sponsored cybercrime or just your general nuisance hacker, the challenge is daunting. If you have services connected to the Internet, you are at high-risk of compromise. You most likely have heard, “It is not a matter of IF, and it is not even a matter of WHEN. You may have already been breached, and you just don’t know it yet.” In fact, 83% of organizations have had more than one data breach and 17% of the breaches that happened in 2021 were not first-time occurrences.1

Prioritizing Your Cybersecurity Risks

With the new Executive Order on improving the nation’s cybersecurity and the focus on zero trust across government and commercial industries, many organizations need assistance with determining their level of risks and creating a prioritized roadmap to mitigate those risks. After all, organizations spend millions of dollars on cybersecurity and risk protection. But is that spend making them more secure?

To build an effective risk governance program, you need to understand and document your current risks. In other words, you need to know what you don’t know about your overall security ecosystem and the inherent risks it contains. But how can you start the process and identify priorities with limited resources?

Start the Journey with a Security Landscape Optimization Tool

A Security Landscape Optimization (SLO) assessment is a way to get everything you need in a simplified document that scores and prioritizes your ecosystem risk. The cybersecurity professionals at Connection work with your security and IT teams to determine where you have technology, process, or policy risks. This is compiled into a highly visual heat map style tool, representing a baseline security risk overview of your ecosystem across four main categories:

  1. Endpoint/End-user Security
  2. Network and Data Security
  3. Operational Security
  4. Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Procedures
Baseline Security Snapshot

The team then takes the results, analyzes it for criticality and priority, and prepares a comprehensive report. This includes step-by-step risk mitigation planning along with recommendations on technology, processes, and policies that should be implemented. This is accomplished in a rapid three- to four-week cycle. The SLO also provides guidance and strategy to address cybersecurity insurance requirements as well as the fundamental architecture components required for zero trust. It fits well with other planning such as ISO 27001 or NIST 800-53 security management.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Cybersecurity Awareness Month continues to build momentum and impact with the goal of providing everyone with the information they need to stay safer and more secure. We hope you take a moment to reset and re-evaluate your cybersecurity strategies to best prepare for what may come.

If you are struggling to find the path to an organized and effective cybersecurity program, explore the Security Landscape Optimization tool or reach out to the team at Connection. You can also visit our Cybersecurity Awareness Month webpage to discover more resources, blogs, and podcasts.

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1 Ponemon Institute and IBM Security, 2022, Cost of a Data Breach Report.

Stephen Nardone, CISSP, is Director of Security Practice at Connection with over 38 years of experience in both the government side and the commercial side of the security business.

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