Walk, Don’t Run: A Security Framework for a Healthy Network (Part 3)

Just as no business becomes an overnight sensation, neither does an organization's security posture. It takes time, patience and hard work. You must start with the basics, work up to advanced moves and commit to the business for life. In my security plan “Crawl, Walk, Run,” here are the basic steps to obtaining and maintaining a fit and healthy network.

We last shared what to do to increase your security posture once you have the basic steps in place. Now we'll look at what you need to do to get your network in A+ shape.

Run

• Perform an Advanced Threat Preparedness Assessment – Once you've discovered where your network is most vulnerable, it's time to fix those areas. Connect with an incident response provider to conduct and evaluate your organization's ability to detect, resist and respond to a targeted or advanced threat, including an Advanced Persistent Threat.
• Monitor mobile devices – Employ a real-time monitoring system that provides you with reports on device and application inventory, asset location, groups/users and related policies, and on compliance alerts to see who is and is not abiding by policies.
• Perform a Red Team Test – Hire an outside security organization to provide cyber-attack simulations using real-world tactics, techniques and procedures. The Red Team poses as a group of white-hat hackers that attack—without harm—your digital infrastructure to see how far team members can go once they sneak inside your network. This will show you where your weaknesses lie so you can take appropriate steps to close up any vulnerabilities before a similar real-life scenario actually occurs. Be prepared to remediate all the findings.

When implementing the steps, be methodical with your process — crawl, walk, run — and don't try to do them out of order. If they are done out of order, you won't have a strong foundation, and the remediation efforts won't work as well because there will be too much to fix. The repairs can't all be done at once, so they ultimately slow down their security progress.

When you complete the run stage, it's like having a black belt in cybersecurity. However, to stay ahead of attackers your security practice should never end. You must constantly keep advancing your cybersecurity practices to outrun your attackers.