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Protecting your organization from cybercriminals is gaining complexity and requiring more resources than ever before. Do your leaders understand the implications of a lack of cybersecurity funding?
Every day, your organization’s digital assets are under attack from cyber criminals around the world. Many of these individuals will never even know the name of your corporation — they are simply attacking at random and hoping that their wide net will haul in big treasure. Other hackers are laser-focused on bringing down your company, looking up unique details about your officers on LinkedIn and other social media platforms while testing the waters with small breaches to determine access available access levels. Safeguarding your innovation and valuable customer data may come down to your organization’s ability to strategically invest in the right cybersecurity tools . . . and gaining the support of knowledgeable individuals that are continually enhancing their knowledge of security procedures. See how these strategic investments in the future may be all that stands between your business and the devastation that can occur during and after a cyberattack.
Perhaps one of the largest challenges facing IT leaders is helping executives across the organization understand the dangers inherent with a lack of cybersecurity without requiring deep levels of technical knowledge. When technical professionals become passionate about a particular topic, bringing the focus back to the business impact can be difficult. Creating a direct correlation between specific cybersecurity incidents and corporate results provides a method of framing the conversation that helps ensure IT receives the necessary funding for strategic investments in cybersecurity. Helping translate the results of cybersecurity spending into real terms allows this type of project to be weighed objectively against other strategic initiatives under consideration for the same budget dollars.
How many individuals do you have focused solely on cybersecurity within your organization? One? Ten? None? Whatever the number, it is unlikely to be enough to handle the response needed in the event of an attack. Even an all-hands-on-deck effort by all your technicians and engineers will require scaling up and education before these individuals can be effective at staving off the aftereffects of a massive attack. Working with IT managed services providers to create a holistic approach to cybersecurity not only provides access to advanced tools but also offers a more expansive skill set in terms of cybersecurity. Making an early investment in prevention includes everything from active monitoring to web-based content filtering, all activities aimed at reducing the possibility of an attack — and limiting the negative impact to your organization in the event of an incident. When you align internal resources around managing external cybersecurity assets as opposed to attempting to build that internal infrastructure, you are gaining flexibility and scalability that would be extremely difficult to grow organically in an affordable fashion.
As you’re sharing this information with senior leadership, one important topic to consider is how to create a culture of cybersecurity awareness. Each time your employees open an email, navigate to a website or fill out a form online is a potential danger to your organization, but are staff aware of the risks they are taking on a daily basis? A strategic investment in training and ongoing education could be the detail that stops a wayward employee from inadvertently providing information to hackers, allowing them to infiltrate your cybersecurity net. A recent study by The Aberdeen Group found that you can reduce the risk of socially engineered cyber threats by up to 70% when you launch an aggressive cybersecurity awareness training that includes a component of ongoing education.
Investing in cybersecurity protection requires an ongoing commitment from senior leadership and a firm focus on the benefits of this investment from technology directors without bogging executives down with the technical details of individual tactics. From advanced cybersecurity tools to active defense and training solutions, finding partners that are able to provide cohesive strategies to protect your organization is going to be an integral component of your success in the security realm.