Technology is a critical part of almost every organization out there. Whether you are using technology to build products, provide services to clients, or improve your productivity and agility, it is crucial to have an IT strategy that includes good cybersecurity hygiene to protect your business.
What is a Cybersecurity Strategy?
What is a Cybersecurity Strategy?Essentially it is a framework that addresses how your company will enable a comprehensive approach toward cybersecurity. This should include the ability to identify all the information technology assets that you rely on to run your business; how these assets will be protected; how you are able to detect an intrusion (incident or breach), how you will respond to a cybersecurity event; and how you are going to recover business operations. A well documented cybersecurity strategy will provide a comprehensive approach to ensure that your company is resilient to any IT outage so that your business continues to operate. Such a plan will ensure that your business:
- Achieves its business goals
- Has the ability to recover operations quickly
- Will survive any IT outage or disaster
Since IT is a part of every aspect of your business its important to ensure that your IT is functioning properly and safely for each department.
When putting together your Cybersecurity strategy, be sure to consider the following:
- People
- Automation
- Sustainability
- Process optimization
You will want to consider the roles and responsibilities of your employees to ensure they understand the role they each play in your Cybersecurity strategy. This will provide your business with the framework needed to implement new IT solutions successfully.
The best strategies work when all employees and staff are informed of best practices, are aware of their responsibilities, and the role they play in keeping data secure. Technology, people, and process all have to work together.
What are the Benefits of a Cybersecurity Strategy?
Having a cybersecurity strategy in place will provide your business with a variety of important benefits, including:
Increased Security
With a cybersecurity strategy in place, you can improve your IT security by assessing your current IT infrastructure and gaining an understanding of your company’s current IT environment. This will help you focus on minimizing potential threats and will allow your team to protect your organization from these threats.
Your cybersecurity strategy should also include IT security training for your employees, so they understand best practices and can follow them to keep your business safe.
Identify Business Risks
At some point, every business will need to deal with risks. Your cybersecurity strategy should identify the risks within your infrastructure and network, so that you can mitigate those risks and make improvements to your security posture.
A well thought out cybersecurity strategy can eliminate risks such as faulty backups, outdated antivirus software, or missed operating system patch updates.
Increase Technology Uptime
IT is a critical part of your operations, any disruption to the technology that runs your business could bring your operations to a standstill. For example, a down network prevents your employees from doing their work. Identifying what processes, tools and people need to be invoked to recover that network will ensure that your business will be able to recover quickly. This will increase your uptime and keep your technology and business running.
The business continuity component of a cybersecurity strategy will identify the most important systems within your organization and what needs to occur to recover these systems in the event of a failure.
With the right processes, backups and redundant systems in place, a component outage won’t halt your operations.
Make Technology Budgeting Easier
When putting together a cybersecurity strategy you will need to evaluate what areas are at risk and what technologies, processes, and people will mitigate those risks. By knowing what needs to be done, you can create a budget to address these areas and be prepared in advance to update, upgrade or replace your existing technology, processes, and staff to be prepared for the future.
CMIT Solutions of Pittsburgh South can help you create a cybersecurity strategy that will keep your company’s data safe and secure. Contact us today to learn more!