Posture Compliance, Securing Your Devices

5 Essential Steps for Securing Your Devices and Achieving Posture Compliance

Ensuring compliance with security standards is insufficient to make an enterprise’s security controls effective and economical. You must create a risk-based security strategy to secure your devices and achieve posture compliance.

It also helps in improving your cybersecurity posture through a device posture check. The cybersecurity posture measures the effectiveness of your organization’s overall security efforts and readiness. This article will discuss 5 essential steps to help you achieve posture compliance.

Regularly Assess Security Posture

Knowing where your company stands regarding cybersecurity is the first step toward creating a strong security posture. At this stage, you should consider building a dedicated cyber team to regularly monitor the organization’s cybersecurity posture.

The initial assessment might be time-consuming, but you must understand that it will benefit you in the long run. You should always look out for new standards that are constantly being set across the market.

Monitor Your Networks and Software

You must keep an eye on your networks and software to identify vulnerabilities. Also, you must ensure that your operating system and anti-malware softwares are up to date. New vulnerabilities keep developing in the ever-changing landscape of cyber security. In case the vulnerabilities are discovered, you must immediately patch the software.

Once a threat or a risk is identified, it is assigned a threat level based on the likelihood of it occurring in the organization. Some tools that help us identify vulnerabilities include automated vulnerability scanning and penetration testing. Besides monitoring networks and software, it is also essential to consider physical vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities associated with employees, contractors, and suppliers.

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Assign Managers to Specific Risks

Once identified and prioritized, the risks should be assigned to the proper departments and managers. This step is called risk profiling. Each risk score is assigned based on the threat level and likelihood. Each manager is required to monitor and terminate the risk. Each process involved in this step should be documented so that a knowledgeable party can track every risk. This also ensures that the responsibility is distributed throughout the organization and not confined to one team only.

Since multiple departments are now involved in mitigating the risks, a strong cybersecurity culture plays an important role at this step. You can minimize the risks and prevent future mistakes by promoting a strong security culture. You must focus on awareness, testing, and training to foster the right company culture. All employees in the organization should be aware of the cybersecurity basics and follow the best practices to secure their devices.

Analyze Gaps in Your Security Controls and Define Key Security Metrics

Once the risks are assigned to the managers, it is important to look for potential gaps in the security controls. This will help you create even stronger measures against cyber-attacks and data breaches. You must select a few metrics to measure your success in achieving poster compliance. This will help you establish a security posture baseline and understand your organization’s current threat landscape.

These metrics include detected intrusion attempts, vulnerability patch response times, incident rates, and severity level of incidents. Furthermore, you may also look for incident response time and time to remediation, number of users broken out by application/data access level. You can also refer to the overall volume of data the business generates to identify any unusual behavior. For instance, the traffic volume can help justify the need for new or upgraded security tools.

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Create an Incident Response Plan

Creating a cybersecurity incident response plan is crucial to achieving posture compliance. It is the ultimate risk-management plan that your organization has to counter the risks and threats. It is a document that gives instructions on responding to a serious security incident. The four phases are covered under the cybersecurity incident response plan.

Preparation

In this section, you need to mention the names of the members involved in the incident response team and their role if/when an attack or breach occurs. You will also specify the incident prevention measures that are in place. This may include monitoring networks for vulnerabilities and regular security posture assessments.

Detection and analysis

The detection and analysis phase specifies the actions that need to be taken when an unusual incident has occurred, and you need to determine the response plan. There can be different sources of security incidents that may be detected in various ways. You need to specify the directions for documenting the incident and prioritizing the response.

Containment, eradication, and recovery

This phase contains guidelines on containing the incident, eliminating the threat, and recovering from the cyberattack. It requires constant updates to your security plan and addressing the vulnerabilities that enabled the security incident in the first place.

Post-incident activity

Once the cyberattack has been neutralized, the organization should focus on debriefing. This phase involves assessing the extent of damage and how effectively it was managed.

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