Contact us anytime to know more — Kuldeep K., Founder & CEO CISIN
Doing your part to protect data with an IT security plan will allow you to avoid becoming the next victim of cybercrime.
Learn about their advantages and the four steps to build one for yourself.
As it relates to cyber security, it can be easy to become lost in technicalities like malware and firewalls.
Brian Moran of Baltimore-based business consultancy advises building an effective protection plan. It would help if you focused first on your home.
No one wants to sleep inside a home with cracked windows, an unlocked door, a leaking roof, or foundation cracks; such conditions invite burglars, animals, and the elements.
Just as with protecting home contents, businesses must protect themselves as much as they would their contents from criminals, animals, and nature - sell all valuables before purchasing an umbrella to provide greater coverage."
Cybersecurity is a complex topic.
Multilayered protection must be implemented to effectively fend off more sophisticated and severe attacks, considering both people and technology factors must form part of this approach.
What is a Comprehensive IT Security Policy (CISP)?
Your organization requires an IT security policy that can prevent data breaches, detect threats and analyze suspicious behavior, and offer remediation in case something goes wrong.
IT Security policies play a vital role.
An IT security policy serves as the cornerstone of any organization's protection, ensuring your data, network, and systems remain free from security threats and vulnerabilities.
Think of it like connecting people, processes, and technology - failure of one of these will most likely cause security breaches within an organization.
An effective IT security policy should define precisely what employees should expect of them and educate them about safe procedures.
A policy like this should cover many activities within your organization's workstation setup process and log-on process; building access procedures they should know of; training of employees on these processes as many security breaches can be prevented when end users understand safety practices;
Many organizations focus their security efforts on deploying technologies, implementing best practices, or responding to an onslaught of issues and alerts that arise, rather than developing proactive measures against threats and alerts.
Unfortunately, this results in reactive security teams, which become overburdened while unable to answer "Are we becoming more secure?" It breeds mistrust between business and security leaders; security measures turn into expensive diversionary activities that worsen operational performance more than they do to safeguard it.
An approach that acknowledges security needs will always outstrip capability is necessary to optimize resource allocations, demonstrate progress toward becoming a safer organization, and ultimately become more secure.
Security organizations must transition away from being security operators towards becoming leaders who guide security efforts effectively to accomplish this objective.
- Moving away from physical and information security controls and towards security risks.
- All decisions, performance metrics, and decision-making in security must now consider risk. Furthermore, ownership of security risk decisions has now been passed on from the security department to the business.
- Leading security. Establish priorities, establish expectations, and oversee risks and efforts to mitigate them.
- Security organizations' primary mission should be identifying risks, providing recommended responses for threats identified, supporting tradeoff decisions related to these risks, and creating a roadmap to follow for their successful execution.
A security operating model enables an effective approach. This model governs and supervises security across an organization in an effective, sustainable, and collaborative way - using risk assessment methodologies for prioritizing mitigation measures to protect enterprise missions while using continuous improvement practices to maintain security controls over time.
Benefits of Having a Comprehensive IT Security Policy
Security breaches can be extremely expensive: an SMB's average security breach costs approximately USD 120,000.
In contrast, it averages an estimated cost of approximately USD 1.23 Million for enterprises. Furthermore, 46% of IT security incidents happen because employees or workers fail to remain informed or are careless with IT systems and network protection measures.
An enterprise should use its security policy as part of an industry-recognized control framework to implement best practices, identify gaps in coverage and address any inadequacies within security coverage.
Control frameworks cascade throughout an organization, ensuring alignment among assets and operating areas to facilitate continuous, efficient operations requiring cooperation and alignment among operating areas to guarantee continuous operation and optimal efficiency.
As evidenced by these statistics, IT security policies are beneficial.
Consider five advantages associated with having one:
- Enhance the overall security posture of your company to lower incidents and ensure greater uptime for applications.
- Utilizing this tool effectively for auditing and compliance purposes leads to enhanced operational efficiencies due to operational cost reductions.
- Create an inclusive workplace.
- Achieving accountability between users and stakeholders within your organization is another benefit to adding accountability measures into operations.
- With effective policies and an inclusive work culture, an organization has an efficient strategy for communicating and enforcing policies effectively.
- Attract talent with diverse backgrounds, identities, experiences, and perspectives.
- Utilize diverse leadership to foster an inclusive workplace environment.
- Verify the fairness of processes and operations within your firm.
How to Build a Comprehensive IT Security Policy?
Establishing an IT security policy may seem ambitious at first. Still, its real test lies ahead: Your employees won't know their duties without clear communication of these policies and their enforcement and updates; for that reason, it must become part of employee job descriptions and routines.
Working with an experienced team will save time, money and ease the headaches associated with creating IT security policies for our clients: We utilize a four-phase process when developing IT security policies:
Prepare an Effective Security Policy Justification and Then Prioritize and Assess It-
Once your business goals have been established, align the security requirements to reduce disruptions while minimizing costs.
It is recommended to implement your comprehensive security plan gradually according to priority.
- Argos is an exceptional enterprise tool capable of reporting on many systems. List these systems, and confirm whether MAPS and Argos work effectively together.
- Identification of Owners. It is crucial to identify who will be accountable for any systems you intend to report, particularly cloud-based apps with multiple owners or fragmented ownership structures; multiple individuals could be responsible for different parts. When configuring MAPS and Argos Security, these details will become invaluable assets.
- Identification of Users and Roles: There will be many users with various needs and abilities using your system; therefore, it would be beneficial to identify types of users at this stage rather than individuals.
- Applications often feature different levels or roles of access for applications, so it would be wise to divide users according to tasks performed or roles offered for better administration later. These roles will later serve as templates when setting up MAPS and Argos Security Roles.
Develop an IT Security Policy
An effective policy framework must incorporate high-level and granular components, which can be altered as necessary to meet changing corporate governance objectives and legal and regulatory obligations without negatively affecting organizational workflow.
- Examine your policies and procedures regarding data access. While it might be tempting to review all the security options offered in MAPS/Argos and then choose those which seem most advantageous, doing this could prove futile; we advise instead using existing policies which match these features rather than inventing new ones that do not match with them; you should define security policies in collaboration with owners of systems you have identified as part of defining security configuration choices accordingly.
- Define your specific goals for security: These should be included within your security policies. For instance, only human resources staff can view social security numbers; thus, the goal is to restrict human resources personnel from accessing tables containing SSNs.
Communicate the Security Policy and Enforce IT
Focus on why security policies apply to all employees and how you can incorporate them into everyday tasks.
The material will be more effective if tailored to employees' daily lives.
- Decide whether to create MAPS Users from scratch, use existing users in LDAP, or implement Federated Single Sign On (FSSO). Having all users within an LDAP server greatly streamlines setup and maintenance by adding desired users directly into MAPS; groupings might represent your organization structure instead. However, when using Federation Single Sign-On with MAPS, MAPS requires their AD group name to be sent back as SAML attributes.
- Object-level security can be flexible, powerful, and simple to set up and use, helping you meet most of your security objectives by restricting user and group access to specific folders or objects.
- Ascertain what permissions data block designers require. Since report viewers or Writers don't create new queries, object-level security can meet their security needs effectively; however, Designers present more of an obstacle; since they can create both objects and queries themselves.
- Examine your policies regarding them carefully if relevant; configure their database connection connections accordingly if one or more DataBlock Designers will only ever work on payroll projects, for instance.
Review And Update Your Security Policy
Security policies should be reviewed regularly to remain relevant and evaluated to see if they work before making necessary modifications.
A minimum annual review must take place to make sure your policies remain effective and relevant.
An IT security model cannot be created simply by combining several tools; its complexity must be assessed holistically.
Your most prized assets - banking and finance, supply chain management, customer information security, intellectual property rights management, and manufacturing operations should all be prioritized when protecting them - must also be safeguarded against. Do you believe your IT department understands all these other areas? While they might assist in protecting them - how will they know where their priorities and impact lie?
IT security must involve everyone within an organization to be effectively addressed.
Organizations that have successfully tackled security often use risk management.
- Build a team of security experts from hr, finances, operations, legal, productions, and it who will create or find tools that help catalog assets, risks, attacks, attack likelihood, and impact and revisit them frequently to adjust as needed.
- Protecting your organization, clients, employees, and vendors through IT security should be top of mind for every organization - not only "larger" companies can fall prey to bad actors' attacks, but even smaller firms are increasingly becoming targets.
This approach can easily be modified for any group, provided an ongoing commitment is to reach long-term goals.
Understanding The New Threat Landscape
Your success as an SME depends upon recognizing what type of cyber criminals and attacks are targeting your company and safeguarding data that needs protection.
Cyber-attacks target small firms more due to their less stringent security measures than larger organizations.
Mark Gilmore is president of wired integrations in San Jose, California. Over the past six to nine months, he has noticed an upsurge of attacks targeting small businesses in recent months; these differ greatly from three to five years ago in that attacks used to target specific information types like financial records instead of maliciously seeking disruption and chaos.
Cyber attacks can result in lost sales, cash flow interruptions, the inability to provide services, and irreparable damage to reputation.
Aaron Hanson of symantec emphasizes the risks associated with cyber-attacks; in many instances, they cost small companies one month of profits before ultimately forcing them into closure (6 out of 10 small businesses close within six months after an attack).
Consider Security in Layers
Small businesses must also protect themselves from increasingly complex cyber attacks that affect larger corporations.
Gilmore notes that small businesses typically rely on consumer-grade antivirus solutions in their defense efforts but may only realize they require professional technology when hit with an infection. Their operations become crippled for days at a time.
Security should be approached as an interwoven set of measures designed to ward off your business's cyber threats, such as backup and recovery systems, firewall protections, website trust marks, and endpoint safety solutions.
Consider your house to understand the significance of taking a multilayered security approach: you might install fencing to safeguard it, lock windows and doors securely, and have an alarm system set off should there be an infiltration attempt.
Assuming you own a small business, similar precautions should also be implemented:
- Firewalls serve as a protective measure for networks. By blocking potential intrusions from approaching, firewalls prevent intrusions.
- Endpoint security solutions (which protect computers, laptops, and servers) serve as locks on doors preventing malware attacks against endpoint computers.
- An alarm system can notify you immediately if any intrusions into your network occur if all computer monitors are enabled. It provides insurance-like coverage against potential security threats to your home and its files and systems should disaster strike.
- A backup strategy also acts as insurance against such losses - helping ensure they can recover quickly in times of trouble.
- SSL certificates--an essential means of protecting credit cards and digital information--authenticate the identity of your business and demonstrate to customers that their transactions on your site are protected.
- Trust indicators in search results could increase customer confidence and traffic to your website.
- Like having your house sealed off, SSL certificates demonstrate how your organization keeps itself protected regularly by monitoring itself securely.
As is evident, protecting a small company does not entail using only one solution; multiple layers of defenses must be in place to effectively secure its assets and assets.
Make Security a Continuous Process
Cybercriminals are constantly devising innovative cyber-attacks; therefore, your defenses must evolve and stay vigilant by regularly updating and scanning for vulnerabilities and malware on your system.
Related:- Utilizing Automation To Improve Technology Services
Automating security can help your employees and devices feel safer; for instance, subscription security services provide easy management and installation; furthermore, they perform safeguards automatically, such as patching devices correctly configured or patching to update patches when applicable.
Remember that one window could cause major damage; ensure all doors and locks remain locked at all times!
How to Choose the Best Security Solution for Your Business?
Assuring the security of your business should not only be straightforward but easy too.
Symantec endpoint protection small business edition provides multiple layers of defense to guard both networks and endpoint computers while continuously scanning environments to identify new threats, all managed from within a cloud-managed service with 24/7 support ensuring maximum protection of both sides of business operations.
Find Out Where Your Business is Vulnerable
Different businesses require unique protection solutions to thrive; each requires something specific regarding protecting itself and its assets.
Moran: "Every month, I speak to numerous small business owners of all shapes and sizes - only about 15% or so are fully protected against disaster in case one strikes their company."
He notes that most business owners overlook one key area when considering clients and vendors: hackers or natural disasters can have devastating impacts, crippling operations for weeks or months or permanently shutting them down altogether.
Do you have up-to-date receivables; are your top two to three clients contributing more than 30% of revenue; are they located nearby to assist should something like Hurricane Sandy strike your area?
An independent security audit is an ideal way to comprehend all your risks, given their complexity, according to gilmore.
He says more small businesses are conducting security assessments and audits on their environments according to him.
Risk-Based Business Plans
Business plans aim to allocate security resources based on risks faced by an organization, providing an essential link between security programs and projects and operationalizing enterprise security strategies and plans into tangible plans and actions.
An ideal business plan aligns with corporate business models while accommodating plans and objectives from stakeholders - four essential building blocks make up such plans:
Security risk analysis and treatment plan: This provides organizations with an opportunity to understand what security risks remain within the organization based on the implementation of security controls frameworks, core function performance measures, and compliance metrics.
Capability maturity: Utilizing an industry-driven maturity model, capability maturity allows organizations to assess the maturity and target achievement levels for cyber and physical security capabilities within and against similar organizations.
Through such assessments, they can compare themselves against similar ones and establish comparable capabilities benchmarks.
Performance gaps: Utilizing performance metrics, this project seeks to provide security organizations and their stakeholders with a clear picture of how well their controls work toward meeting goals that support individual strategic objectives.
Scope control: Organizations can adjust their scope controls based on the risks faced by their organization and any necessary changes that must be implemented, which includes security updates such as improving functionality or efficiency for cyber or physical controls or expanding to cover wider assets like infrastructure control systems and the cloud.
Security Models To Avoid
Since 1987, I have witnessed various security models employed by organizations. Unfortunately, most took less-than-ideal approaches; here are a few such strategies taken by companies:
The "Necessary Evil Approach"
Management understood they needed to act, so they purchased Antivirus software and a firewall, setting them up without much care or attention; "fire and forget" in other words, once set, there wasn't often revisiting.
Their budget was small to spend only minimal amounts, consider their losses but use them to appease bankers or boards while receiving no indication if these products truly protected their business.
It Was Contacted to Handle the Matter
But IT understands risk, exposure, and exposure because no executives are willing to back real strategies for risk mitigation.
Thus IT was forced to ask for money and fit security into "Total cost of Ownership" or "Return On Investment" budget models even though those familiar with risk mitigation know security costs cannot easily fit within those frameworks.
Does property insurance yield returns for its purchases? No, as we understand it, they're meant to cover us in a disaster such as a hurricane or fire damage.
Reactions to a Security Breach
Management takes notice and wants us involved after an incident; they demand we conduct "root cause analyses," economic impact assessments, and other assessments that sound serious.
It's common for IT to become the target of blame games following any serious breach; someone often gets made the scapegoat if enough data leakage occurs. Unfortunately, once the initial shock from an incident has subsided, companies often return to using security approaches that were vulnerable before it, spending perhaps several hundred dollars more for another tool but quickly shifting focus onto more pressing concerns than security-related ones.
Conclusion
Implementing security while giving users access to systems they require can be challenging; by adhering to these recommendations, you should soon see benefits from creating a safer reporting environment.
A security operating model defines an agreed approach for responding to security threats and who will take on each task, serving as the benchmark against which performance in security will be judged.
Security operating models operationalize enterprise security strategies, translating broad visions of security into practical plans and actions for enterprise protection.
Through such models, leaders can get an easy overview of desired capabilities alongside potential people/process/technology enablers. An effective security operating model helps organizations balance risks against industry expectations while making smart allocation decisions of security resources.
Security leaders must act like conductors of an orchestra. They should lead multiple instruments to work harmoniously around one piece of music.
Security leaders should strive to combine melodies, harmonies, and rhythms to produce an impressive symphony that protects enterprise missions successfully. This proven security operating model can serve as an excellent demonstration to business leaders that you are actively working toward creating a safer organization through proactive rather than reactive measures.
