How to Ensure Effective Cyber Security at Your Organization
Leadership and Culture
Leadership plays an important role in ensuring the cyber security of an organization, leading by example and thereby demonstrating their commitment to making security a top priority. There must also be a real commitment to investing in security initiatives, particularly in training and technology, to support teams in mitigating security threats in an ever-evolving risk landscape.
Regarding culture, as the late Peter Drucker stated: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, which applies to cyber security too. A positive culture, which values security will motive employees to be much more aware and proactive in reporting and responding to potential security incidents. Whereas a negative or indifferent culture creates an environment where cyber security is not taken seriously and can lead to damaging results when cyber-attacks do occur.
Open Communications
Leaders can also support a positive culture by promoting transparency and open communication relating to cyber security. This is particularly relevant when incidents do occur, and even if the incident was caused by the actions of an employee. Leadership needs to ensure that there is an environment where employees are encouraged to report an incident as soon as possible without fear of reprisal, which could prevent an incident from escalating.
Awareness
Given that over 80% of breaches in the past year involved the human element, having leadership promoting an ongoing program of training and awareness is critical. Effective cyber security training should provide practical and relevant skills to employees on how to identify and respond to security threats. Apart from formal training, regular awareness should be provided on various cyber security topics such as social engineering, phishing and other online threats.
Furthermore, organizations will benefit from applying best practices to support their cyber security programs. This would include performing regular assessments of their cyber security to help identify vulnerabilities and areas of improvement. In order to ensure a robust cyber security program, ongoing monitoring of logs can help identify issues and applying tested incident response plans can mitigate the damage which a cyber incident could have to the organization. If the worst-case scenario does come to bear, it is important that a tested business continuity plan is ready to be implemented, so that organization can continue to operate after a damaging incident.
Driving a Successful Security Program
At OMMAX, we understand the importance of providing a cyber security strategy which meets the strategic needs of- and enables organizations to maintain a positive cyber security culture. We can support you in identifying your current security maturity and will provide a roadmap and plan to ensure that all aspects of cyber security work in cohesion. Starting with your people, to advising you on how to apply appropriate processes and technology which will help protect your organization from the damages caused by cyber threats.
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