When your organization is young and growing, you may find yourself overwhelmed with a never-ending to-do list. It can be easy to overlook security when you’re hiring new employees, finding infrastructure, and adopting policies. Without a proper cybersecurity strategy, however, the business that you’ve put your heart and soul into, or the brilliant idea that you’ve spent years bringing to life, are on the line. Every year, businesses face significant financial, brand, and reputational damage resulting from a data breach, and many small businesses don’t ever recover.
Not only that, but as you grow you may be looking to gain investors or strategic partners. Many of these firms are not willing to give organizations that don’t take security seriously a chance. A strong security stance can be your differentiator among your customers and within the Venture Capital landscape.
One thing’s for sure: you’ve spent a great deal of time creating a business of your own, so why throw it all away by neglecting your security? You can begin building your own cybersecurity strategy by following these steps:
1. Start by identifying your greatest business needs.
This understanding is critical when determining how your vulnerabilities could affect your organization. Possible business needs could include manufacturing, developing software, or gaining new customers. Make a list of your most important business priorities.
2. Conduct a third-party security assessment to identify and remediate the greatest vulnerabilities to your business needs.
The assessment should evaluate your organization’s overall security posture, as well as the security of your partners and contractors.
Once you understand the greatest risks to your business needs, you can prioritize your efforts and budget based on ways to remediate these.
3. Engage a Network Specialist to set-up a secure network or review your existing network.
A properly designed and configured network can help prevent unwanted users from getting into your environment and is a bare necessity when protecting your sensitive data.
Don’t have a set office space? If you and your team are working from home or communal office spaces, be sure to never conduct sensitive business on a shared network.
4. Implement onboarding (and offboarding) policies to combat insider threat, including a third-party vendor risk management assessment.
Your team is your first line of defense, but as you grow, managing the risk of bringing on more employees can be challenging. Whether attempting to maliciously steal data or clicking a bad link unknowingly, employees pose great threats to organizations.
As part of your onboarding policy, be sure to conduct thorough background checks and monitor users’ access privileges. This goes for your employees, as well as any third parties and contractors you bring on.
5. Implement a security awareness training program and take steps to make security awareness part of your company culture.
Make sure your training program includes topics such as password best practices, phishing identification and secure travel training. Keep in mind, though, that company-wide security awareness should be more than once-a-year training. Instead, focus on fostering a culture of cybersecurity awareness.
6. Set-up multi-factor authentication and anti-phishing measures.
Technology should simplify your security initiatives, not complicate them. Reduce the number of administrative notifications to only what is necessary and consider improvements that don’t necessarily require memorizing more passwords, such as password managers and multi-factor authentication for access to business-critical data.
7. Monitor your data and endpoints continuously with a Managed Security Services Provider.
As you grow, so does the amount of endpoints you have to manage and data you have to protect. One of the best ways to truly ensure this data is protected is to have analysts monitoring your data at all hours. A managed security services provider will monitor your data through a 24/7 security operations center, keeping eyes out for any suspicious activity such as: phishing emails, malicious sites, and any unusual network activity.
You’re not done yet: revisit your security strategy as you evolve.
It’s important to remember that effective cybersecurity strategies vary among organizations. As you grow, you’ll want to consider performing regular penetration testing and implementing an Incident Response Plan.
And, as your business changes, you must continually reassess your security strategy and threat landscape.
