How To Develop & Plan An Effective Cyber Security Strategy

Technology development has raised both the risk and threat of cyberattacks. There is a need to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap and address the scarcity of cyber talent because cyberattacks are becoming more violent and frequent. 

There are an exponentially increasing number of users, devices, and resources on enterprise networks. Property, trade secrets, brand, employees, and customer data of a corporation are all at risk due to this growing threat landscape.

With so many businesses investing in more complex technical solutions, it makes sense that cybersecurity has grown in importance. However, getting complacent about your overall security would not be a good idea just because you have all the computer security solutions set up. While technology solutions are unquestionably a crucial component of the defensive puzzle, a lack of a cybersecurity plan will limit the effectiveness of those resources.

Corporate leaders, decision-makers, and other essential entities who take the time to evaluate their unique organizational objectives, employee and customer needs, and the overall risk profile are often considerably better positioned to reduce risk exposure. This blog will undoubtedly help you if you want to understand the objectives of cyber security, elements of cyber security, the goal of cyber security, measures to promote cyber security and cybersecurity strategies. 

If you want to become a cybersecurity specialist, you can join a Cyber Security Course in Chennai, which will help you have a profound understanding of Cybersecurity risk management, Identifying Cyber-threats, Fundamentals of Cryptography, Cloud Security, and Network Security.

What is cybersecurity strategy?

A cybersecurity strategy consists of comprehensive plans for how a company will protect its assets and reduce cyber risk. 

The cybersecurity strategy should be a dynamic, ever-evolving document modified to address the most recent threats and the dynamic business environment, much like a cybersecurity policy would. 

However, they should be updated and reviewed as often as feasible. Cybersecurity strategies are typically created with a three to five-year vision.

While cybersecurity policies are more detailed and specific, cybersecurity strategies are more of a blueprint for your organization to guide the key stakeholders as the company and business environment evolve.

Objectives of cyber security

Your cyber security strategy should be planned out in eight steps, including a security risk assessment, security objectives, technology evaluation, security architecture selection, defence policy review, risk management plan creation, implementation of your security strategy, and security strategy evaluation.

To have a better understanding of cyber security core concepts, you can join a Cyber Security Course Online and learn objectives of cyber security, elements of cyber security, goal of cyber security, measures to promote cyber security and cybersecurity strategies more in-detail.

The goal of cyber security

Many companies are starting to understand the threat that cyber attacks pose to their productivity, goodwill, and bottom line.

The authentication process, safety training, and other best practices are advantages against investing heavily in security measures like monitoring tools.

A genuinely secure corporation has a strong cybersecurity policy and a clear plan for addressing future security requirements. 

What are the Cyber Security Strategies?

A strategy for cyber security entails choosing and implementing effective best practices to protect a company from internal and external threats. Additionally, this strategy establishes the foundation for a business’s security programme, enabling it to adapt to new dangers and risks continuously.

Defence In-Depth Strategy

• To effectively handle the threats and dangers that are now evolving, the cyber security plan should consider establishing defence in depth.
• The objective of employing this strategy is to stack security safeguards. This tactic improves a company’s capacity to lessen and restrict the harm a threat actor causes.
• A business may use various solutions, including host firewalls, VPNs, anti-spam software, and antivirus software, to safeguard its endpoint devices.

Zero Trust Security + Defense In Depth

A great way to establish the framework for an effective security strategy is to layer various technologies to provide defence in depth. The tools must, however, be supported and monitored for efficiency. Thus a corporation must have the necessary resources.This could add to the complexity. A zero-trust paradigm should also be used to address this problem.

Zero trust suggests that you should never believe anything. Zero trust allows the organization information on who and how the assets are being used within the network, including multifactor authentication and machine learning.

Cyber Security Strategy For Enterprise VS Small Business

What are the differences between a security plan for small and enterprise businesses?

The number of employees and income are the main distinctions between a large organization and an SMB (Small to Medium Sized Business).Both sorts of businesses have the potential to become targets of threat actors, regardless of their size.

An SMB that manages HIPAA data must follow the same rules as a major corporation. However, malicious hackers and email phishing only make a difference depending on the number of employees. A large organization has a broader footprint of data to secure. It may demand a more significant expenditure in an IT budget to invest in the right measures to ensure the data.

The bigger businesses that generate revenue are the top targets for an attack.In most cases, the business has insurance and may have money set aside to pay in case of a ransomware attack.

An SMB is typically thought to have insufficient funds and resources to secure its networks completely.Because of this, they are also vulnerable to attacks.

Therefore, a cyber security strategy is just as crucial for large corporations as SMBs.The organization’s security requirements are determined by its business model and the estimated risk that it is responsible for managing.

To learn networking concepts, you can join CCNA Course Online and learn  routing and switching essentials,  Scaling Networks, Connecting Networks, routers and types of networking. 

Affordable Security Options Available For SMBs

SMBs need more resources, planning systems, retaining technology and maintaining industry competitiveness.Proper planning of where expenses are required is essential to face the challenge, especially regarding the company’s security.

The good news is that many security firms have converted their massive enterprise product suite for the SMB market.

Less than 300 licences are subscribed to Symantec/Broadcom, McAfee Small Business Edition, and Microsoft Office 365 Business. Microsoft just unveiled Microsoft Defender for Business, a high-end endpoint security solution for companies with up to 300 employees.

Why Are Cyber Security Strategies Important?

Since the frequency of security-related breaches during the pandemic surged by 600%, developing and implementing a cyber security strategy is more critical than ever.

The average ransomware payment increased by 82% to $572,000 in 2021 from the previous year. There is no evidence that these attacks are slowing down, and malicious hackers will likely keep targeting weak systems.

Increase In Recent Cyber Attacks

Businesses are being disrupted by cyberattacks more and more frequently, and the situation is only getting worse as threat actors discover new ways to attack.

This year, we have covered a lot of recent cyberattacks, such as:

• Cisco Cyber Attack
• Twitter Zero-Day
• Starlink Dish Hacked
• Mantis Botnet
• Maui Ransomware Attack
• Hertzbleed Attack
• Cleartrip data breach
• SolarWinds Attack
• Accellion FTP Data Breach
• Pulse Secure VPN Breach

Attacks are noticeably rising across all industries, with a recent study finding that the retail sector is especially vulnerable to social engineering-based cyberattacks.

Even if security measures had been implemented, 89% of healthcare businesses had a data breach in the previous two years.This results from web apps linked to vital healthcare data being susceptible to cyberattacks.

Join a Cyber Security Course in Bangalore and learn the goal of cyber security, essential components of cyber security, Cyber security threat landscape, Cybercrime and its types.

Data Center & Cloud Transformations

Businesses today are making use of the cloud and conventional data centres. Many businesses today are creating enterprise applications in cloud containers without the support and staff knowledge.

According to a cloud research company, breaches caused by cloud configuration errors exposed roughly 33.4 billion records in 2018 and 2019. The data centre’s on-site server farms are either not used to their full potential or are not properly managed.

Numerous times, inadequate security measures are taken to protect access to sensitive data, or there are gaps in our ability to identify the data owner and fix security problems.

These are just a handful of the issues many firms face with data security and cloud adoption.

Policies To Consider When Developing A Security Strategy

The information security policy is a vital component of an efficient security strategy. All employees must adhere to a set of defined security policies to ensure the privacy, security, and accessibility of information and resources. 

The security policy outlines what is expected of the company to protect the organization, how it will be done, and what happens if it doesn’t work out. Many businesses choose to have distinct policies in addition to a single information security policy rather than a single comprehensive one.

When the policies are broken up into smaller ones, the end user can quickly grasp them. Below we shall discuss a few policies that can be developed in addition to the fundamental security policy.

Network Security Policies

These broad security policy templates explain network access rules, system architectures, security settings, and how policies are applied. They are a collection of standardized practices and procedures.

If you want to become a cybersecurity specialist or ethical hacker, you must have an understanding of networking. If you want to learn networking concepts, you can join a CCNA Course In Bangalore, and learn OSI models, IP addressing, IP routing, Network security and management, WLAN and VLAN.

Data Security Policies

In formal documents referred to as data security policies, the goals of data security and the particular data security procedures that have been chosen to be implemented are laid out.

Data security policies may incorporate various security controls depending on the business model and the specific threats being mitigated. 

Workstation Policy

General protection (use an antivirus, lock unattended, password usage, patching)

Acceptable Use Policy

• Acceptable/unacceptable Internet browsing and use
• Acceptable/unacceptable email use
• Acceptable/unacceptable usage of social networking
• Electronic file transfer of confidential information

Clean Desk Policy

Explains the benefits of having a tidy desk with little clutter, even if private notes are on it or taped to the monitors.

Remote Access Policy

• Description of remote access
• Who is authorized (employees/vendors)
• Types of permitted devices/operating systems
• Methods allowed (site-to-site Virtual private network, SLVPN)

If you want to become an ethical hacker, you can join Ethical Hacking Course In Chennai, which will focus on imparting the learners the essential concepts of hacking such as hacking tools, cybersecurity strategies, and methods of hacking to be implemented. 

Objectives of cyber security and measures to promote cyber security

• An IT security management risk assessment is performed for organisations to assess, determine, and modify their overall levels of security. 
• Collaboration between various groups and data consumers will be necessary for the risk assessment. 
• This procedure is necessary to ensure organisational management’s commitment to allocating funds and put the right security measures into place. 
• The value of the various kinds of information generated and kept within the firm is also determined by a thorough enterprise security risk assessment.
• Prioritizing and allocating technological resources where they are most required is practically impossible without valuing the various forms of data that the company produces.
• Management needs to identify the sources of data that are most important to the firm, where the storage is situated, and their vulnerabilities in order to properly assess risk.

The following is a list of the areas that served as sources for the assessment:

Identify Assets

Utilize your present asset tracking technologies i.e.laptops, operating systems, servers, etc. Choose Your Data Classifications

Public – Any data you publicly share, such as website content, publicly available financial data, or any other information that, if compromised, would not have a negative impact on the company.

Confidential – Information that should not be made public. Confidential data may be shared with third parties or, in limited circumstances, made available to external legal entities, but this would necessitate the use of a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) or other safeguards to prevent the data from being accessed by the public.

Internal Use Only – Similar to confidential information but not permitted to be disclosed to outside parties.

Intellectual Property – Information that is essential to the company’s basic operations and, if compromised, would harm the company’s ability to compete.

Compliance Restricted Data – This information needs to be carefully managed. This information must be accessed and stored in accordance with the applicable frameworks, such as CMMC, HIPAA, HITRUST, and NIST.

Map Your Assets

Software – Keep a repository for officially approved corporate software.

Systems – Utilize a Central Management Database (CMDB) to map assets back to their owners or systems.

Users – Organize users into groups using Active Directory’s role assignments.

Identity – Assign users to assets and resources in accordance with their present roles and functions, and routinely monitor these allocations.

Identify Your Threat Landscape

Assets + Vendors – Work with the legal teams to find agreements with third parties, such as NDAs or a list of BAAs for companies that offer healthcare. External vs internal infrastructure – Determine each network’s egress and entry points. Map where environments connect – Ensure that network diagrams are accessible and current. Make sure infrastructure diagrams are accessible when operating in the cloud.

To get into the demanding and most sought-after ethical hacking career, you can join Ethical Hacking Course in Coimbatore, and learn FootPrinting , Enumeration, Network Scanning System Hacking Methodology, tools, etc.

Prioritize Risks

Identify the owners  important systems and data by conducting a business impact analysis (BIA). Establish and maintain a risk register to track the resources or systems that pose the greatest danger to the organization’s business systems’ privacy, authenticity, and availability.