What is your company’s standard protocol in the event of a security breach? What happens next if a threat is discovered? What security measures does your company take to ensure that you are performing security testing?
These questions are likely to be difficult for you, so it is worth looking into improving your security posture.
What security posture are you taking and why is it important?
Your security posture can be described as a barometer of how well cybersecurity is being practiced in your organization and how prepared you are for an attack.
A strong security posture means that you have the processes in place to protect both your business and your applications from potential threats and vulnerabilities. It is imperative that IT professionals and teams maintain a high level of security posture in a world where sensitive information is at constant risk of being compromised by malicious actors.
How to assess your security position
Your organization’s risk exposure directly affects your security posture. To improve your security posture and make sure it is at its best, The risk that you take is lower. Take steps to evaluate the security posture of your business. You’re already reducing risk by taking action. Assessing security posture starts with identifying the problem and taking steps to correct it.
Many security tools provide surveys and evaluations that can help businesses evaluate their security posture. These evaluations can help you determine the vulnerability of your assets and identify risks and weaknesses to prioritize changes based on severity. You will see a greater impact on your security posture if you make certain changes or adjusts to your security practices. It is important to address these first.
Here are some steps to improve your security posture
Perform a security assessment
It is essential to assess risk before you can improve your security posture. This will give you a complete picture of your security situation. A cybersecurity risk assessment will identify any vulnerabilities in all assets. The risk assessment will tell you what IT assets are most valuable to your company, how likely an exploit is, the impact of data breaches, and other information. This exercise will help you determine the information value in case of a data breach. This type of assessment can be performed by security tools or an in-house security team.
have an incident management plan
A good plan for incident management is essential to your organization’s security. IT teams won’t be able to find the right place to begin if there is a security breach unless they have an incident management plan. It will reduce the time required to fix a security breach in the future by having a list of steps you can take. This will improve communication and collaboration by identifying which teams will assume certain roles in the event. To improve and strengthen your incident management plan, you can conduct a test breach.
Prioritize business impact
The next step is to identify the risks and vulnerabilities that your business faces. Prioritizing risk posture the ones that have the most impact on your business can help save you time and money. Prioritizing will be easier if you can identify the impact of these vulnerabilities and risks on business-critical applications. Once you’ve mastered this process, you can begin to take action to improve your time management and efficiency.
Use DevSecOps practices
Security audits should not be delayed until the end of each quarter to allow for breaches and attacks to occur. Security testing will allow you to integrate security monitoring into your daily routine.
- Static Application Security Test – Helps identify vulnerabilities by looking at your code.
- Dynamic App Security Testing – This puts administrators in the shoes of an attacker to identify weaknesses and gaps.
- Interactive Application Security Testing – This combines both SAST/DAST to use software instrumentation to monitor the performance of applications.
- Runtime App Self-Protect – Uses real-time data from apps to detect and respond to attacks as they happen.
Eliminate silos
Silos in IT departments are more vulnerable than those that work together. They don’t communicate well during a threat. A collaborative culture between all teams will allow them to understand their connections and how each team is affected by a breach. Teams should not point fingers at each other after data breaches. Instead, they need to have open discussions with one another to understand how working together can solve security problems quickly and efficiently. Using a DevSecOps policy that involves security from the very beginning of app development can help to foster a culture and communication among teams.
Automated threat detection and remediation
Administrators are often overwhelmed by all the information contained in modern applications. It’s almost impossible to keep track of all potential threats. Relying on admin alone leaves a lot of room for error and security gaps. App security should be proactive and not reactive. This is why it is important to incorporate technology that automates the threat detection process. RASP automates the threat detection process, allowing your app to recognize and respond to threats automatically.
Regular updates are necessary
You can’t let your security tools and practices deteriorate if you want to keep your cybersecurity posture strong. For optimal results, they must be constantly updated and improved. Security teams must be ready to make changes and adjustments as necessary to keep abreast of security technology advancements and new threats. These updates and reassessments should be included in the IT and security team’s calendars to prevent malicious actors from taking advantage of old technologies.
