How to improve your organization’s security posture

Made up of both technical and non-technical policies and procedures, a security posture is your organization’s overall security plan or the steps your organization takes from planning to implementing your security. A strong security posture is essential for any organization big or small to protect themselves from any cyber-attacks or breaches. Maintaining and testing if your organization has a strong security posture can mitigate internal threats, negligence, and attacks from the outside. In order effectively create a strong security posture, you must understand the eight categories of cybersecurity which are affected.

These categories include:

  • Fraud                                                             
  • Employees
  • Data
  • Applications
  • Infrastructure
  • Security intelligence
  • Business partners/outsourcing
  • Threat intelligence

Understanding these categories will be the first step in determining the organization’s security posture. Addressing the organization’s risk, priorities, and assets should directly align with the organization’s goals.

 Your security teams should be knowledgeable about what is vital to the organization. This can include client data, contractual information, email accounts, or intellectual property. Educating your security team is crucial for the security of the organization. Your team should receive regular training in the best security practices, have a sense of ownership of security policies, and should be held responsible for their actions.

The Organization should also establish a strong incident response policies and procedures that is able to quickly acclimate to change. These policies should be well documented and practiced regularly. Creating metrics to measure the effectiveness of the security process, such as penetration testing or operational game days is also a great way to test the security posture. Regularly testing of controls is a central requirement for a compliance audit. Security should be enveloped into the fabric of the organization. Security is everyone’s responsibility, not just the security team. If the employees are educated and aware, it is more probable they will speak up if they detect something wrong. Employees will also respect and follow the security controls put in place because they are aware of the significance of their existence.

Performing a security posture assessment is vital in determining potential weaknesses in your controls to effectively enhance your security. Firms such as LIFARS, can provide assessments using vulnerability assessments and penetration testing procedures to accurately evaluate the risks, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities and create a strong security posture for your organization.