29 Dec 5 Cybersecurity Planning

With a new year comes different challenges and technological developments. Each of these play an integral role in the management and usage of IT. With that expansion of tech, however, comes the need to secure it from threat-actors, disaster scenarios, human error, and hardware failure.

More than ever, any enterprise relying on modern technology for business operations must develop a comprehensive cybersecurity planning. Not just for securing their valuable data, but to maintain compliance with new mandates, regulations, and requirements.

It is no longer feasible or recommended to operate any venture without some form of cybersecurity infrastructure. Even SMBs should have architecture in place, including procedures for disaster scenarios. Fortunately, developing a basic cybersecurity plan and framework is not difficult. With time, patience, and planning, even smaller organizations can create resilient IT architecture.

The key is to develop a strategy following several critical steps. These steps build a strong foundation, even if they are simple. And, a strong foundation can be built on, ensuring long-term security and organizational health. While every organization has its own needs, there are fundamental guidelines you can establish.

From the beginning

First, remember that your cybersecurity plan needs to cover all tech-adjacent characteristics of your business. This includes internal data, software and apps, servers and storage, and cloud networks (if relevant) to name a few.

Once you understand all internet-facing nodes relevant aspects of your enterprise, you want to establish the end goal: to create an agile, responsive, and resilient cybersecurity posture.

Phases of Cybersecurity Planning

Generally, there are several steps to follow when creating and executing a cybersecurity plan. We’ll cover them in brief with the elements previously discussed.

Step 1: Identify

Once again, identify and gather all relevant nodes related to your IT infrastructure, data, and tech used for conducting operations.

This helps you create a risk management portfolio. In other words, determining what poses the greatest dangers to your IT data.

Step 2: Establishing Defense

With nodes and internet-facing resources accounted for, created a defense plan is the next step. That includes what your enterprise will incorporate into its plan. For instance, you can introduce guidance training and awareness programs aimed at modern threats like ransomware or social engineering.

This also should consider budgetary needs and whether experts will be needed for long-term maintenance and development.

Step 3: Detection and Awareness

Threat detection is one of the most critical pillars regarding strong cybersecurity architecture. If you have limited threat awareness, you can’t properly utilize the defense tools set up in the first place. Threat awareness combines in-house monitoring and broad scale observation of cybersecurity trends and/or threats. This part of IT infrastructure also determines the effectiveness of actual threat detection and ensures these methods are practical.

Any comprehensive cybersecurity plan should implement awareness and detection into their architecture.

Step 4: Response Plan

When the foundations are set, possessing a comprehensive response plan is essential to planning good cybersecurity. This phase should include resources designed to respond to incidents, be they disaster scenarios, hardware failure, malware intrusion, and network loss.

If, after analysis of internal systems, your enterprise lacks comprehensive resources to respond to different events, it’s important to discover alternatives and workarounds. For example, some utilize cloud and virtualized system to scale their infrastructure vs onboarding new hardware installations. Others rely on third-parties like MSPs or data centers to provide backups in case of intrusion.

Step 5: Recovery Plan

Lastly any good cybersecurity plan should incorporate recovery methods. How does the enterprise return to normal operations after a disaster scenario? What resources are in place to aid this procedure?

Once you’ve finalized this step, you’ve built a comprehensive plan. Even at its most basic, this cybersecurity plan can address even some of the most complex issues modern businesses face today.

Conclusion

While there is no “one size fits all” cybersecurity philosophy for every enterprise, the foundations for comprehensive planning are the same. Much of it comes down to information and insights, knowing where all your internet-facing connections are, and planning for disaster scenarios. This is especially important with tightening regulations regarding intrusion reports and cybersecurity mandates.

If you need additional assistance, considering getting help from a managed service provider. For more information, you can contact Bytagig today.