Cybersecurity is nothing new. The difference today is that it’s in the public eye, and you hear about it more often. It’s a two-sided coin – a good thing when there’s high awareness – a negative when there is fear and misunderstanding around it.
In reality, good cybersecurity practices teach us valuable lessons and how to think about risk mitigation. It is analogous to human healthcare. What do we do when our health is vulnerable and at risk? We seek protection. Who provides it? Either we do (our internal self/organization), or an outside contractor (external provider) provides it for us.
Vulnerabilities are the weak spots in your organization because they are the entry points attackers will look to expose unless you have security infrastructure, monitoring, and management in place. Addressing these vulnerabilities requires time, energy, and money, but it’s well worth the effort.
A healthy and resilient organization assesses, addresses, and repairs its vulnerabilities. In contrast, a weak organization ignores them at its peril, leading to a higher risk of exposure to viruses and attacks.
Your organization faces threats from both internal and external forces. The computer networks within it are threatened by in-house (employee) behaviors and foreign actors in the outside world (the external internet).
Once your organization understands its vulnerabilities, cybersecurity experts can help you build and move forward with a plan to manage and mitigate these threats, thereby reducing its risk profile and setting you up for future success.
Key questions to ask:
- Identify: Why is it vulnerable?
- Understand: How is it a risk?
- Plan: How should it be configured?
- Act: What is the process to secure it?
- Monitor: How do I track it?
- Respond: If something goes wrong in the future, what happens next?
Like personal and organizational health, there is no shortcut to effective cybersecurity. It requires a commitment to addressing and managing your organization’s vulnerabilities.