Assess Before You Invest in Cybersecurity Technology

According to a recent post on CSOOnline , getting the needed budget to handle organizational cybersecurity threats,? privacy mandates, and staffing security operations continues to be challenging for most CISOs. In this latest study by BSS , 78% of CISOs saw a budget increase in response to a significant cybersecurity event.??

Are CISOs still grasping a shortfall in funding for cybersecurity investments? Absolutely.?

?Where should CISOs in 2024 focus their cybersecurity budgets and human capital resources???

What are the Benefits of a Security Assessment??

Following pre and post-COVID-19 events, many CISOs faced having to make knee-jerk investments in their cybersecurity programs to meet the demand for a remote workforce. These investments, including extended detection and response(XDR), zero-trust network access(ZTNA), and cloud-based multi-factor authentication, became deployed with haste.??

Looking forward to 2024, CISOs opting for an assessment of their current security capabilities helps determine several critical factors:?

• How many redundant security controls exist within the environment??

• Does the security operations team have monitoring visibility into critical systems, hosts, and end-user activity??
• Did the current investments, including XDR and ZNTA, become fully deployed and deliver the expected preventive results??
• Did we conduct end-user cybersecurity training to compile with our cyber insurance renewal???

Assessments help determine if these security solutions and training investments delivered the expected results by reducing security risk while optimizing business operations.?

Identifying Areas of Vulnerability Through Assessment?

Risk within the organization is a constantly changing threat landscape. Users, cloud-based application instances, and client data are not the only targets hackers focus on. Access to personal information, data around the supply chain and ecosystem partners, and intellectual property has become a higher priority for many hacking groups.??

A good example of the global risk against these attack surfaces is the actions taken by nation state actors.

Nation state actors use various tactics to gain access to intellectual property, including requiring to become part of joint ventures. This results in trade secrets being stolen.??

Assessments, including red team and blue engagements, look at all aspects of the cybersecurity risk, including the example of nation state actors accessing sensitive data within the organizations' various enterprise architectures and networks.??

Analyzing Industry Best Practices and Standards for Security Programs.?

Many organizations, because of compliance and privacy mandates, align with several industry standards, including:?

• NIST-SP 800-53: NIST-SP 800-53 lists controls that help secure federal information systems. These controls ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability.?
• GDPR: GDPR is a European data privacy regulation that gives individuals in the EU/EEA rights over their personal information and sets guidelines for businesses worldwide.?

An assessment will help determine if the organsation complies with these mandates. An assessment will also determine if the various cybersecurity capabilities, including adaptive controls, architectures, and operations processes, are functioning as expected to support these mandates.??

Why Assess Before You Invest??

Often, #CISOs and #CIOs have to make some tough choices between doing an upgrade of a critical application system or delaying this event until the following fiscal year. Assessments help give the executive leadership insight into the current risk and vulnerability before executing a new solution purchase or holding off until the platform shows signs of exposure. The challenge is that the velocity of change within the global threat landscape is happening faster because of hackers' inception of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).??

Assess more frequently helps guide the need to invest.?