As the number of Cyber-attacks continues to rise and the associated remediation, as well as preventative costs, Most organisations have now come to accept that Cyber threats are now the status quo and as such, there is now a shift away from treating cybersecurity strategy as a separate one-off concern.
While IT managers are still the first point of call for managing incidents, threats, etc, It's clear that senior management is more proactive and deliberate in adopting “good security practice” into the corporate culture.
So what is the state of Cyber Security Globally as we collectively adopt an “all hands on deck” approach to corporate security:
Hybrid Working continues to extend the threats into users’ homes that continue to lag on security. With the proliferation of IOTs devices from smart kettles to smart Wheelchairs, for example, there remains a gaping hole in the hybrid working environment. While ensuring endpoint security is in place for corporate devices as well as other hardening measures such as VPN for corporate connections; There are still many opportunities for Threat actors to access the corporate environment - think of people stepping away from their device and forgetting to lock the screen or connecting their personal phones to the corporate laptop for a quick charge.Phishing, spear-phishing, and Smishing attacks are still on the rise and are getting more sophisticated. Attacks are spending more time studying their targets and leveraging the knowledge gained from this reconnaissance to launch attacks that spoof and mimic real communication.
The Threat to SMBs has grown to a critical level. The bottom line is Cybercriminals expect that Large Enterprise organizations have the money, expertise, and resources to throw at any cyber event. The same can’t be said about smaller organizations that historically have very tight IT budgets and often struggle to get the right number of resources to deal with their technology estate let alone deal with the level of complex attacks that they have become targets for. This trend will not be changing anytime soon, and even more, worrying is the fact that cybercriminals are starting to use smaller establishments as springboards to gain access to large enterprise operations by exploiting the various supply chain relationships and connectivity
How to Manage the Threats
Senior leadership alongside Technical Leadership should be thinking about Security as an ongoing basis. The role of the security officer or chief security officer is no longer a role that can be combined with another responsibility within the organization. Security Officers need to be focused and enabled to deliver protocols, controls, and policies that protect the organization from internal and external threats.
The asset management function in any organization needs to be enhanced for visibility and responsibility. “You can’t protect what you can’t see” - ergo the technical leadership should consider a regular review of both soft and hardware assets.
User education is the core of any corporate security strategy. Until corporate users come to terms with the fact that they are an ever-present attack vector, the appropriate protections will continue to fail at the user level.