Why the World Needs Proactive Cybersecurity

This blog was originally published by Bitglass here.

Written by Ben Rice, Bitglass.

Computing is now in a ubiquitous state with users able to connect to a dizzying number of services and applications. Companies have networked together everything to reduce costs, increase automation, and achieve digital transformation to make employees more productive. This ease of access and interconnectedness also leads to grave security threats and the urgent need for proactive cybersecurity. Although the penetration of security products in business has gradually increased over time the sophistication of attackers has also advanced at an exponentially higher rate. This problem is even more grave for small and medium-sized companies because they often lack the expertise and tools needed to implement a proactive cybersecurity program. One that stops threats before they result in data breaches.

Today, larger companies with more personnel and budget are likely to have a Security Operations Center (SOC) with dedicated personnel that analyzes and acts on threat data. However, for smaller companies without the luxury of having a SOC, their already stretched-out security teams are placed with an additional burden of going through this tsunami of data. Without proper rigor of this data, these companies are significantly reducing the value of their security products whose sensors and data can often alert the organization to an incoming threat. Compounding this problem is that cybersecurity tactics are based on current problems while threat actors have moved on to a new vulnerability or attack technique. We see the gap between big companies and smaller companies is widening with more attacks being directed at smaller companies as they are easier to compromise.

To close this gap, companies need to make security a strategic imperative by committing to hire security experts, deploy cutting-edge security products, and continually monitor their cybersecurity posture. In addition, it is also important for organizations to give their security teams broad responsibility and budget to continuously monitor for attacks and breaches, and be empowered to make changes in operations to update security for new attacks and stay ahead of breaches by hunting for threats as opposed to waiting for them to happen. This is what proactive cybersecurity is all about.

Having a proactive cybersecurity posture can be a differentiator. Giving your customers peace of mind knowing their data is safe can go a long way in retaining customers as well as attracting new ones. Eventually, this will cause competitors to up their security to keep up and raise the level of safety for all.

I know what I talked about sounds like a lot, but the current strategy of “Set and Forget Security” just isn’t not working.