Understand cybersecurity management, its benefits, best practices, and future trends.
Definition Definition Best Practices Risk Management TrendsCybersecurity management refers to an organization's strategic efforts to safeguard information resources. It focuses on the ways businesses leverage their security assets, including software and IT security solutions, to safeguard business systems.
These resources are increasingly vulnerable to internal and external security threats such as industrial espionage, theft, fraud, and sabotage. Cybersecurity management must employ a variety of administrative, legal, technological, procedural, and employee practices to reduce organizations’ risk exposure.
Cybersecurity is crucial to operational processes because it guards against the theft and destruction of data and IT systems, including personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), personal data, data pertaining to intellectual property, and information systems.
Your company cannot protect itself from data breaches without a cybersecurity strategy. In the absence of effective cybersecurity management practices, your organization becomes a prime target for cyber criminals.
While a commonly accepted framework for cybersecurity has not been established, there are some guiding principles, precautions, and technologies that many organizations have chosen to adopt, including:
These serve as the de facto frameworks for cybersecurity management, and they outline techniques and standards for protecting digital assets.
Global Threat Landscape Report 2H 2023
FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report 2H 2023 shows Cybercriminals Exploiting New Industry Vulnerabilities 43% Faster than 1H 2023.
Download NowAn effective cybersecurity management policy takes into account the risks that exist for an organization's resources. Those that administer the program formalize processes and procedures. Once vulnerabilities are found, the management policy will outline solutions to stop malicious code from infiltrating the organization's perimeter defense systems, servers, and desktops. It also describes how to deploy mitigation measures and who is in charge in the event of a breach.
A cybersecurity management program provides an organization with critical services, such as:
Some external cybersecurity management services also provide IT security consulting to help companies craft the best strategies to protect their environments now and in the future.
What is cybersecurity management? A cybersecurity management system is different from cybersecurity itself. Cybersecurity management focuses on ways to organize security assets, people, and processes, while cybersecurity is a general label for protecting an organization’s digital infrastructure.
In this cybersecurity management definition, the act of managing cybersecurity involves both technical strategy and shaping company culture.
Here are six tried-and-tested best practices for cybersecurity management.
Effective cybersecurity management requires in-depth knowledge of the IT environments and resources within your firm, including all data and other digital assets, BYOD devices, systems, networks, third-party services, technologies, endpoints, and other relevant items.
Awareness of all the elements of your IT landscape is critical, especially because each facet of your network can be used to penetrate your system. Also, it is imperative that you assess your assets and monitor your IT environment continuously.
Managing risk without a well-thought-out and effective cybersecurity risk management strategy is counterproductive. Organizations must create sound strategies and plans to keep them up-to-date.
Prior to planning, determine your level of risk tolerance and then create a risk profile. Include roles for all employees and key stakeholders, incident response and escalation strategies, and other relevant information.
Even well-crafted cybersecurity risk management policies and processes are useless if they are not properly implemented throughout the firm. So make sure to convey your ideas, plans, and procedures to all parties involved. Integrate cybersecurity risk management within the values and culture of the company. Each party involved in managing cyber threats needs to be aware of, understand, and embrace their responsibilities.
Risk identification and assessment are two of the most crucial components of risk management. Risks associated with cybersecurity are always changing. A change in company procedures or the introduction of new technologies, for example, can change your risks significantly. As a result, the organization's general risk assessment has to be adjusted. To ensure effective security, your procedures must be continuously assessed for deficiencies—and improved.
Risk assessments are also critical because they provide the business with information about where vulnerabilities currently exist, as well as which threats are on the horizon.
Effective risk mitigation requires a security system that is both comprehensive and user-friendly. Here are a few techniques:
Visibility into all areas of your network is critical to preventing and mitigating cybersecurity incidents. Factors like insider threats, third-party components with built-in vulnerabilities, and human error can endanger your environment. Real-time and trustworthy visibility into your organization's risk profile is essential.
Here are some of the current trends impacting cybersecurity risk management.
Attacks on the digital supply chain can yield a significant return on investment, as cyber criminals have come to realize. More dangers are anticipated as new vulnerabilities proliferate throughout the supply chain. This is primarily because third parties, which have varying levels of cybersecurity, have become a primary attack vector for bad actors.
For example, even though your environment is relatively secure, a criminal may use a provider in your supply chain with access to your system as a conduit to infiltrate your network.
Attack surfaces on enterprise systems are growing. Risks related to IoT, open-source software, cloud computing, complicated digital supply chains, social media, and other technologies are leaving many organizations exposed to attackers. To handle a wider range of security exposures, companies must look beyond conventional security monitoring, detection, and response methodologies.
This may involve developing internal and external business systems, as well as automating security gap identification. Chief information security officers (CISOs) can use external attack surface management (EASM) technologies, digital risk protection services (DRPS), and cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM) to implement these kinds of systems.
Executives now want more adaptive security as enterprise cybersecurity demands and expectations mature. To do this, it is best to spread cybersecurity decision-making, accountability, and responsibility throughout the organization, rather than keeping them centralized.
This is particularly important because of the increasing size and complexity of organizations, which may make it difficult for a single person or small team to handle cybersecurity management on their own.
