Our goal in building a security awareness program is to embed security into our partners’ existing organizational culture. Impacting culture is a long-term process that can take years and requires executive support. If you are tasked with managing a security awareness program, it is your job to measure and show leadership that your program is…
Read
One of the most common questions asked by business leadership is also one of the most challenging to answer: “How secure are we?” Now, some of you reading this may already be cringing or yelling at your screen that this question on its own shouldn’t have a simple answer with little actionable value. However, when…
Read
For many organizations, rapidly implementing work-from-home initiatives over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic required quickly rolling out new processes and deploying new technologies without adequate time for attention to Information Security standards. Perhaps your company recently acquired a new line of business, and you want to make sure the integration won’t adversely…
Read
As the security industry continues to progress, companies are focusing on their own security programs, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. One of the areas of focus that goes to the early days of the security industry is penetration testing. Penetration testing has always been a validation method to identify exposures and…
Read
An organization’s overall security posture can be viewed from multiple different angles, such as technical assessments, program assessments, controls assessments, and risk assessments. A number of different frameworks for each of these assessment types exist, intended to help both technical teams as well as leadership organize security program building activities. Some of these include: Penetration…
Read
Logging, monitoring, and alerting programs are some of the most critical elements of any security and compliance program, but traditional approaches for implementing and upgrading these capabilities are often noisy, expensive, and laborious. Traditional Alerting Approaches are Failing During program assessments, we find that a lot of clients are generating so many alerts that they…
Read
Third-party risk management is an essential element of information security. It is common to see news about a large company being breached, and after learning more, you find out the breach was the result of a vendor. When you depend on another organization for a critical business process and allow them access to your network,…
Read
Deploying a remote workforce is uncharted territory for some organizations, while others have been perfecting the model for years. Most security programs have different ways to handle their workforce. For on-premise users, which has traditionally used more of castle mentality where you attempt to prevent outsiders from penetrating the network perimeter (similar to a castle…
Read
In what is certain to be a wakeup call for many organizations involved in Department of Defense contracts, The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) is set to become a part of life in 2020. Much like previous requirements, the CMMC requirements will also apply to subcontractors, and all Requests for Proposal (RFPs) will require CMMC…
Read
Why Does Strategy Matter? The term ‘security strategy’ can be ambiguous and often means different things to different people. Because of this, many organizations do not have a formalized security strategy and those that do may not have an effective one. This is understandable. Managing the day-to-day issues associated with a security program (alerts, audits,…
Read