What Cybersecurity Strategies Strengthen An Organization's Defenses?

Before you let vendors convince you to buy tools and technologies to implement the newest cybersecurity acronym, which mostly serves to benefit them, look internally to better understand the risk threshold for your organization and ensure your program is built around that. Every organization has a different threat profile and risk appetite. Those should be understood and agreed upon between executive and security leadership. Once that occurs, measure your current capabilities against an existing framework such as those provided by ISO or NIST.

Compare your current maturity against the areas you and executive management have agreed are critical to protect your most important assets, and customize your program around those gaps. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building a cybersecurity program, and the most effective way to strengthen your own company’s defenses is to first understand what is important and your current gaps through an align, measure, execute, and repeat process.

We've implemented the 'least privilege' access principle throughout our organization, and it's been a game-changer. Picture it like distributing keys to your office. Instead of a master key that opens every door, you carefully assign access only to the rooms necessary for individuals to perform their tasks. When we applied this approach to our digital resources, it significantly reduced the risk of unauthorized access while also creating a security-first mindset within our organization.

The one cybersecurity strategy an organization can implement to greatly decrease its attack surface, strengthen its defenses against threats, and improve its overall security posture is to put into practice a Zero Trust architecture. This method creates a more robust and durable security mechanism by acknowledging that attacks might come from both inside and outside the network.

You can have all the technical cybersecurity solutions that you want, but the truth is that 9 out of 10 cybersecurity incidents happen because of human error. That's why we put focus on the human aspect of cybersecurity, which is something that most companies, sadly, don't prioritize.

Here are some of the things that we do to strengthen our defenses:

Instill a cybersecurity culture where openness is key. It's okay if you click on a phishing email as long as you don't keep it a secret. We also carry out security awareness training on various IT and cybersecurity topics so we all stay up-to-date on the latest topics and threats. Phishing simulations keep us on our toes and help us recognize the different types of phishing emails.

Those are some of the things that we do to keep us safe. Of course, we also have technical solutions, but they go hand in hand with the human factor.

Patch/vulnerability management systems keep our tech up to date, but always testing for potential vulnerabilities/weaknesses helps us identify what to focus on.

In my previous role as an IT manager, I implemented multi-factor authentication for all employees accessing sensitive systems and data. This additional layer of security helped prevent unauthorized access, as it required employees to provide an extra form of identification, such as a fingerprint or a unique code generated by a mobile app.

For instance, there was an incident where an employee's password was compromised, but thanks to multi-factor authentication, the attacker was unable to gain access to the system. This strategy proved to be highly effective in protecting our organization's valuable information.