Picture it: it’s tomorrow. You open the newspaper (or the web browser) and see the headline “[insert your organization name here]’s data breached! Thousands of files are now left vulnerable to hackers. Millions of dollars at stake.”
Rewind to today. What should you be doing right now to protect yourself from the headline of tomorrow?
The aftershock of a security breach can be felt for years after the impact, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and a lengthy recovery period. By establishing a strong foundation in cybersecurity measures and workforce posture, you’ll be able to set your organization up for success — and the only headlines your organization will make will be the good kind.
What Is Your Cybersecurity Workforce Posture?
Cybersecurity posture refers to the overall state of cyber readiness within your organization. It is a measure of several elements, including but not limited to:
- Inventory of your IT assets
- Documented processes and policies that protect your organization from attack
- Your ability to catch and contain cyberattacks
- How well your organization would recover from the attack
- Are you following the regulatory standards that apply to your organization
- Can you prove it as of the now past tense time of the breach
- Are the work roles correctly identified, or is security left to being implied
- Are your people trained for the cybersecurity roles they’re performing
- Do you onboard and offboard people into roles in a manner that can produce evidence
People and Policy, Not Technology, Make the Difference
The best cyber technology in the world today still requires people to build, operate, and manage it. Cybersecurity professionals make the rules for firewalls, software, and intrusion detection and prevention systems use. If people aren’t trained and adhering to a standard, problems will arise. The best tech in the world isn’t going to help.
Most organizations today understand the value of their cyber professionals, yet they still remain vulnerable in spite of it. How is it possible?
People manage and enforce policies to protect assets. The organization, however, determines the policy to which they will adhere. Unfortunately, many businesses adopt inadequate policies or leave the policy-making decisions to I.T. managers who may or may not know what policies they should be following.
Developing a compliance policy isn’t an abstract exercise or thought experiment. It includes adopting a standard (ex: NIST/NICE), creating the actual policy, and measuring the policy against that standard.
Only when a policy has been adopted can workforce roles and training happen in a thoughtful and deliberate way.
Effective Policy and Workforce in Action
How can you protect it if you don’t know what “IT” is? When a policy is measured against a standard and enacted, it will allow for greater visibility into your network as well as provide a calculated breach risk.
Ability to catch and contain cyberattacks
An effective policy will ensure the correct security protocols and cyber readiness controls are in place. It will highlight gaps in workforce training and needs for training to mitigate against potential threats. It will also ensure the workforce in place is prepared to adequately respond when an attack occurs.
Recovery
In the event of a breach, how long will it take for your organization to recover? The stronger your cybersecurity workforce posture, the greater your resilience.
Getting Your Cyber Workforce Cyber Ready
Cyber attacks aren’t going anywhere; in fact, they are happening at an unprecedented rate. Organizations must be prepared in ways they hadn’t thought about before, preparing and training their employees for the inevitable. Your cyber readiness plan should include:
- All standards for cyber training (DoDD 8570, DoDD 8140, NIST NICE, etc.)
- Security skills gap analysis
- On-demand “state of the organization” visibility and reporting
- Automated compliance tracking for employees
Why CyberSTAR?
CyberSTAR is the trusted source for ongoing cyber training. Used by the DoD and other government agencies as well as corporate customers, it is the most effective automated credentials management and cyber workforce compliance system available, with over two million registered users.
CyberSTAR helps streamline processes and maintain current credentials for your cyber workforce by:
- Ensuring proper training and certification (including DoDD 8570, DoDD 8140, NIST NICE, and other commercial standards)
- Matching personnel and roles to contractual or regulatory requirements
- Forecasting, planning, and recruiting workforce
- Continuous compliance and on-demand reporting
- Reducing the cost and complexity of identifying skill gaps
CyberSTAR is the one source of truth for all your cyber training and certification—evaluating, expanding, and enhancing your organization’s cyber readiness.
Click the image below to request a free demo of CyberSTAR today.
