Tips and tricks to continuous cyber security agility
Cyber threats and attacks in cyberspace are inevitable. More organizations are now advancing towards digital and, as such, are exposed to increasing capabilities and opportunities as well as vulnerabilities. With this, the organizations cannot continue to depend on countering every cyberattack head-on. Their best bet would be to heighten cyber resilience and agility from their end.
Cyber attackers have excellent agility, as they continuously change and adopt new attack strategies once their previous ones are compromised. To be on par with them, organizations also need to adopt new security strategies that are resilient to cyberattacks continuously. And to do this, it is crucial to strike a balance between security and agility.
In this article, we will discuss why cyber agility is critical for every organization and tips to continue cyber security agility.
The 5 key principles of cybersecurity
#1 – Advanced access security
It’s no news that passwords and usernames are insufficient to ensure absolute security. Organizations need to put extra security measures, like the 2FA and MFA. Both of these security measures provide one or more additional layers of protection and security and, as a result, make it more difficult for cyber attackers to gain access to an organization’s data and IT systems.
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#2 – Attack simulation measures
Attack simulation measures allow organizations to know the weak points in their security system before an attacker does. Organizations use attack simulation to replicate cyberattacks on their security. This enables them to identify and eliminate holes in their security system before an attack can penetrate.
Attack simulation gives the organizations insight into the strength of their security and tackles any weak points discovered in the process, thus enhancing more robust cyber security.
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#3 – Fail-safe approach
The fail-safe approach restores and maintains the system’s secured state in case of any attack or invasion. This approach ensures that even while the security system is compromised, access is still denied to the intruders. Even while the security system is down, a layer of protection is still in place to protect the usually vulnerable components of the system after any attack.
The fail-safe approach is like a backup that kicks in if all other measures to keep the attackers away have failed.
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#4 – Managing user privileges
IT specialists should properly control users’ access to secured systems of the organization. Every user should have access privileges suitable to their work and function within the organization. Granting access to users that don’t need it can lead to misuse and neglect, which might pose a big risk to the organization’s security system.
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#5 – Cyber security monitoring
Cyber security monitoring is an automatic threat control measure that helps to prevent cyber attacks by continuous scanning and monitoring of the security system. This measure allows an organization to quickly detect any attempt at invasion or any threat and send alerts to counter the intruder immediately.
This helps to mitigate and manage security risks effectively before the security system is compromised.
Why is cyber agility critical for your business?
⊕ Enhanced security
Traditional security measures can no longer keep cyber attacks at bay. Also, the cost of an average data breach increased by 2.6%¹, showing that organizations must pay more to correct their security mistakes. To avoid this, Cyber agility comes to the rescue by keeping the security system upgraded and updated to prevent and combat any form of cyberattack on the security system. This provides a form of enhanced protection and security to the system.
⊕ Risk management
Continuous monitoring and adaptation of cyber security allow the system to manage security risks. With cyber agility, organizations can control the rate of cyber attacks. If any invasion were to occur, risk management for a compromised security system would be minimal.
⊕ Risk mitigation
Organizations receive thousands of security alerts, and about 57% are false positives, according to a survey carried out on security executives by FireEye. With this large amount of false alerts, it is challenging to prioritize actual attacks, and this could lead to a successful cyber invasion.
Cyber agility mitigates the risks of security compromise by differentiating and prioritizing alerts to identify actual threats from false positives.
5 tips for continuous cyber security agility
Think cloud
Take your business to the next level by introducing a cloud-based security system. Companies that use cloud services have a greater chance of enhanced cyber security. A 2021 global threat intelligence report² shows that a great deal of focus is put into protecting the security of cloud-based services. This way, by storing all the information and data of your organization in the cloud, you eliminate the risk of data loss from physical devices and theft from external attacks and invasion.
Make life easier for your IT team
When attacks become cumbersome, it belittles the efforts of your IT specialists and team. However, with cyber security agility, they only have to focus on creating a solid foothold security system that is resilient to any cyberattack. It makes work easier for them and thus increases their productivity.
Continuous security upgrades
To ensure continuous cyber security agility, the security system and its components must be constantly updated and upgraded to meet the security standards. Series of tests and attacks should be tried consistently to make sure that the security system is up to par against any external attack.
Control of risk mitigation
Measures that help to mitigate security risks should be effectively employed. Authentication methods that send immediate alerts upon discovering any invasion attempt would notify organizations of any risks that are immediately nullified. This makes sure that security risks is properly managed and monitored.
Fast response to possible risk alerts
Once an alert of a security breach is received, responses should be put in place by security executives to either prevent access with an extra layer of security or destroy any attack internally. These fast responses would further enhance the agility of cyber security.
How IAM and CIAM can boost cyber agility
IAM and CIAM can effectively control the security of the workforce, both on an internal and external level, respectively. IAM would deal with the security of employees’ access to data and information in an organization, whereas CIAM would work on the majority, the customers.
This way, both access management protocols can manage access security at both ends of the spectrum, thereby strengthening cyber security agility of the organization’s resources.
Cyber agility is a growing trend that implies the ability to continuously adapt cybersecurity measures and actions. Following the same idea, Gartner introduces the CAT (Continuous Adaptive Trust) model and we see new solutions that are more flexible and scalable. Knowing how to be reactive is good, but having the right solutions to avoid critical situations is way more efficient. And that means introducing cyber agility into your cybersecurity policy.
Cyber agility is critical in this digital world where cyber-attacks are constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated. Being cyber agile is an approach that involves being able to detect threats and respond quickly by adapting security measures to limit and counter attacks.
There is no magic solution to being cyber-agile. You need to take concrete steps and implement flexible, modern solutions. Consider, among other things, moving all your data to the cloud, making the work of IT teams easier with, for example, orchestration tools. Also, don’t forget to constantly update your security, master risk mitigation by performing penetration tests/simulations and being responsive to risk alerts.
CAT is GARTNER’s analytics-first approach to user authentication that continuously evaluates a range of evidence supporting (or negating) a claim of identity, with credentials on the same footing as signals, rather than being given any special credibility, dynamically adapting to changes in access risk.
