Security is not a product, but a process !

A lot of corporations are investing massive sums of money in security. But security breaches continue to happen again and again. And as long as the defence is treated as a one-off mission, it will continue to happen. 

Every organisation is a priority today. Over the past ten years, the emergence of cyber threats has been powered by monetary gain. Money is worth business properties. Whether it’s your consumer details, your knowledge about employees, your intellectual property, or your infrastructure access. When provided, there is always someone who is willing to take it. 

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It doesn’t take long for today to be struck by a cyber attack. Most threats are still widely spread and use vulnerabilities that are already established. On top of that, the possibility of targeted attacks and advanced threats is rising, and smaller and smaller businesses are also concerned. And the companies working within today’s collaborative environment may be used by attackers as an entry point to your own organisation or vice versa. To get hit with a targeted attack, you no longer have to be a multinational company. Everyone can be a target.

You have to run through the entire phase of comprehensive cyber protection in order to monitor and mitigate the risk and to deal with cyber security professionally:

1. Identify your confidential data, including research into your product, intellectual property, financial records, consumer information, and information about employees. This will be the information you will need to concentrate on securing your wealth.
2. Identify risks that are likely. You should classify what types of threats are present for each category of information that you find sensitive. You should also look out for insider risks, such as careless employees and disgruntled employees, while you should be wary of third parties trying to steal your details.
3. Analyze holes in encryption and other flaws. Review your existing protections to evaluate what, if any, vulnerabilities or flaws exist that can be used to gain access to your confidential information. 
4. Evaluate the risk level linked to each vulnerability. Using variables such as the probability of an attack occurring, the level of harm you would sustain, and the amount of effort and time you would need to recover, rank your vulnerabilities. The more likely and dangerous an attack is, the more attention you can give to minimising the associated danger. 
5. Get in place countermeasures. The last step in organisational protection is to establish and execute a threat elimination and risk mitigation strategy. This may include upgrading the hardware, developing new sensitive data policies, or educating staff on sound security practices and policies for the organisation. Countermeasures should be clear and straightforward. With or without additional training, employees should be able to enforce the necessary steps on their part.

Best Organizational Security practices 

To incorporate a robust, systematic operational security programme, follow these best practises: 

1. Implement precise change management protocols that should be adopted by the staff when network changes are carried out. In order for them to be tracked and audited, all changes should be logged and managed.
2. Restrict access using AAA authentication to network computers. A “need-to-know” basis is also used as a rule of thumb for access and exchange of knowledge in the military and other government agencies.
3. Provide the workers with the minimal access needed to perform their work. Follow the privilege level access strategy
4. Enforce dual control. Be sure that not the same people in charge of security are those who work on your network.
5. Incident reaction and preparation for disaster recovery are often critical components of a sound security posture. You must have a plan to identify threats, react to them, and minimise potential harm, even if operational security measures are robust. 

Security cannot be achieved without a core process and commitment. Likewise secure environments make people trust and believe in the organisation.