Step-by-Step Guide to Develop a Cybersecurity Strategy

A cybersecurity strategy may not be absolutely perfect, but you must be proactive in implementing it. There must be practical and active support and in a constant state of evolution to remain ahead in the competition. It is a high-level plan for your organisation to secure its assets for the next few years. The right cyber security strategy can prevent minor threats from becoming major losses. It can guard your reputation in the market and protect your organisation and its assets from any unexpected harm.

Building a Cybersecurity Strategy for Your Business

Building a cybersecurity strategy for your business is not an easy task. Instead, it takes a lot of effort and investment, along with a well-thought-out approach in place. However, you must be careful and understand the basic steps to develop the strategy to ensure maximum success.

Here are the four steps needed to get there:

Step 1. Know your Cyber Threat Vulnerabilities

Before you start making a strategy, it is vital to know and evaluate the different types of cyber-attacks your organisation faces. So first, find out the kinds of attacks you face frequently and most critically. Is it phishing, malware, spyware or some insider threats or something different? Meanwhile, also keep tap of your competitors’ cyber health. Are they too facing cyber threats and similar incidents recently, and if yes, what are the types of threats bothering them?

Next, keep yourself updated with all the predicted cyber threats that may harm your organisation in future. For example, many cybersecurity experts and researchers speculate that as the ransomware businesses prosper, ransomware will become a bigger threat. There are many such threats that you need to understand to keep yourself aware of them. Identifying the severity of each threat, you may face in the future is a secret to building an efficient cyber security strategy.

Step 2. Evaluate Your Cybersecurity Capacity

Once you know your weak areas and what you need to overcome them, you will need to do an honest investigation of your cyber security maturity. NIST Cybersecurity Framework is a framework that you can pick and utilise to conduct a complete assessment of your company’s capability in many different categories and subcategories. The framework is capable of recovering incidence apart from evaluating your cyber security policies and governance to security technologies. From traditional information technology to operational technology, Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems, the capacity assessment should cover everything in its ambit.

You can use the same framework to determine your organisation’s potential in the next three to five years for every category and subcategories assessed earlier. For example, if ransomware will be your biggest security threat, you must ensure your backup and recovery capacities are highly potent and seasoned. Every company needs to keep in mind that if remote working policies become permanent due to the impact of the COVID-19. You must be concerned about the protection of the tools deployed during the pandemic. You must embrace this maturity or capacity assessment practice as your new technology objectives.

Step 3. Plan Upgradation of Your Cybersecurity Program

Once you are aware of your position, that is, your vulnerabilities, strengths, and capacities, you will need to find out the cybersecurity solutions and best practices to achieve your cybersecurity goals. Then, scale up your cybersecurity program to accomplish the objectives you have determined. Think about all the pros and cons of every improvement you make. Each step will require some investment of resources — money, time, workforce, etc. As a result, you might need to outsource some or all of your responsibilities.

Let the internal team and top management review the improvements. Work on the feedback if needed. Upscaling your cybersecurity application may have an impact on the functioning of your business. However, protection from malicious cyber threats is essential for all organisations today.

Step 4. Document your Cybersecurity Plans

Next, you must document your cybersecurity strategies after receiving consent from the concerned teams and top management to deploy them. The document should cover – policies, procedures, guidelines, details of risk assessments, cyber security plans, and everything to achieve the security objectives. Also, make sure tasks are allotted to team members and the responsibilities given to every member is crucial. Everyone in the company must play a role to improve the company’s cyber security plans.

Keeping the documents updated is essential for future references.

Conclusion

Implementing and upgrading your cybersecurity strategy should be a continuous process. The process may be tough and challenging, but it is necessary for all enterprises, big or small for the threats it protects your company from. So, however challenging it may be for you to implement, ensure you are prepared to counter cyber threats and hire the right cyber security company to protect your company from cyber-attacks.