Organizations need to consider many factors and premises to determine their cyber security strategy. In a constantly changing technological environment, companies need to identify and protect their strategic assets through dedicated security systems that ensure business continuity.
Awareness in the company
As in any strategy, the involvement of the company's management in cybersecurity is a key factor, so the role of the CISO is important since it is integrated with the higher levels of the company to learn first-hand the strategic objectives of the company and protect them adequately.
The cybersecurity strategy depends on these strategic objectives, but also on the resources and capabilities of the organization, as well as internal and external factors that we call context. When applying strategy to the operational layers of an organization, adapting to our reality is critical to success.
A good starting point for defining the security strategy is to answer the following question: what is critical for the organization? What are the assets that we cannot do without?
Cybersecurity Strategy
At this point we will develop a strategy called defense in depth. Originating from the military world, its goal is to slow down the enemy's advance by using a variety of techniques and controls (layers) instead of relying on a single defensive method. As a result, attackers need more time and knowledge to compromise the security of critical assets, allowing defenders to develop more effective responses.
But that is not all. When defining your strategy, remember that in terms of cybersecurity our reality is constantly changing, so the strategy we define for our company must be flexible enough to adapt over time to market demands and new technologies. .
Implementing the right strategy
A cybersecurity strategy means that the team acquires the knowledge, manages the necessary procedures and is constantly updated by implementing all these controls. This means that, in many cases, the organization itself cannot afford the level of complexity.
For this reason, many companies rely on external support to help them respond to cyber incidents, monitor their infrastructure for breaches, or in short, provide specialized cyber security solutions. With this in mind, the following points should be considered when defining a strategy:
- Decisions based on data and information. The first step to define a strategy is to know our organization, what is important and what are our strengths and weaknesses.
- The cybersecurity strategy must be supported by senior management. And vice versa, cybersecurity must support and adapt to business objectives.
- Implementing a cybersecurity management framework will allow us to better manage processes. Be it ISO 27001, 27110, ENS, NIST framework... It is a good strategy to choose a standard that defines and relates the different processes.
- The strategy is a consequence of your context. To define a strategy you must know your reality. Resources are always limited
- Responsibilities and security roles defined. It is essential to determine who is in charge of what to define the different processes to be implemented in order to carry out good cybersecurity management.
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