Maintaining security posture is key to protecting organizations against cyberattacks. Here’s how to improve your security posture and keep your business safe. 

Building a strong security posture is the foundation of a secure organization. It covers all the standards and processes you need to follow—including risk assessment, data protection, and compliance.

Here’s everything you need to know to improve your security posture, from a security posture definition, to examples and more details on enhancing it.

What Is Security Posture?

An organization’s security posture is a holistic view of the cybersecurity measures you have in place, including practices, policies, and plans for lessening a cyberattack’s impact. A security posture covers everything from software and the software development lifecycle (SLDC), to physical security to safeguard equipment and limit access.

A strong information security posture means you’re better prepared to protect data and networks from potential attacks, and comply with regulations, while a fragile one leaves cracks in your defenses that let cybercriminals break through.

Let’s break down a security posture’s key components:

Risk Assessment and Management

To identify potential risks and determine how much damage they could do, analyze your systems, perform regular security audits, and stay informed about emerging cyberthreats. Knowing the hazards and vulnerabilities is key to developing strategies to handle them.

Incident Response Plan and Recovery

No matter how good your defenses are, you need a plan for when things go wrong. Incident response is your game plan for handling the risks you identify, while recovery focuses on restoring systems quickly. This includes having data backups, alternative systems, and a clear procedure for the return to normal operations—while keeping operations running as regularly as possible in the meantime.

Network Security

When data travels on servers and between devices, it’s more vulnerable to disruption and theft. Network security protects the digital pathways that connect your systems and devices, both within your organization and to the outside world.

Data Protection

For many companies, data is the most valuable asset. When cybercriminals gain access to assets like sensitive customer information or intellectual property, it leads to reputational damage and even legal consequences.

Encryption, access controls, vulnerability-free software, and regular backups protect data from infiltration.

Compliance and Regulatory Adherence

Complying with regulations isn’t just about avoiding fines or legal trouble. It’s about meeting standards that keep your organization and your customers safe. Many industries have specific cybersecurity rules and regulations, like special data handling requirements to prevent unauthorized access, so make sure you know which apply to your company.

Security Policies and Procedures

Every organization should have written guidelines about how teams handle data, use company devices, and respond to potential security issues. Clear policies put everyone on the same page.

Access Control and Identity Management

Make sure that the right people—and only the right people—have access to sensitive resources. Even one person’s weak password can expose the whole organization and lead to a data breach. Implement strong password policies, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and robust systems for managing user accounts and permissions.

Employee Awareness

How well does your team understand and implement security practices? Everyone should know potential threats, recognize security risks, and exhibit day-to-day behaviors that protect your organization. Conduct regular training sessions to keep teams up to speed, and offer hands-on workshops to equip employees with the skills and knowledge they need to maintain a strong security posture.

Physical Security Measures

As mentioned, physical threats, such as unauthorized access to server rooms or theft of devices that contain sensitive data, can also compromise your security posture. Examples of ways to avoid these vulnerabilities include security control for access to server rooms, secure disposal of sensitive documents, and strict protocols for encrypting and handling removable storage devices.

Improving Your Security Posture in 6 Steps

Explore a step-by-step process to boost security:

1. Create a Security Posture Assessment

First, take a look at the policies, procedures, and safeguards you already have in place. Use that information to create a formal security posture assessment—a document that clearly details where you are and where you want to go.

Here’s how to perform a posture assessment for an organization:

1. Planning: Identify the assessment’s goals and the scope of the task.
2. Documentation: Compile all the data available about current security practices to create an overview. This shows where you are in the information security posture journey.
3. Assessment: Next is the assessment phase, which tests how prepared you are for cyberattacks. Some companies work with external agencies for this stage because they can spot weaknesses you might overlook. Gap analyses and penetration testing can also find vulnerabilities.
4. Reporting: Discuss findings with key stakeholders. Then they can take that information and determine how to move forward.

Testing security posture just once isn’t enough. Create a new assessment every few months or years to keep tabs on your processes and continuously improve security.

2. Rank and Prioritize Risks

Sit down with key stakeholders and decide what to improve first. For example, you may notice through the gap analysis that you don’t have MFA enabled, which could be a significant entryway for cybercriminals. Another risk may be that your current software encryption is weak or that your software supply chain security could use a boost. Tackling these one by one is much more manageable than handling them all at once, so choose the most important ones and go from there.

When deciding what to prioritize, focus on business risk. Typically, this includes customer data or intellectual property. Starting here lets you rectify each issue faster before moving on to address smaller threats. For instance, the absence of MFA lets cybercriminals access employee accounts. Address this immediately because it’s a gateway to further breaches.

3. Educate Employees

Set up security awareness training to teach employees about physical or cyberthreats and why they’re important to know about. This boosts organizational preparedness and improves security posture.

By educating employees about the prevalence of cyberattacks and common attack methods like phishing, your entire team knows what to look for and can solve problems faster. Stay up to date with emerging security trends, as cybercriminals are always evolving, and a little knowledge about new methods goes a long way.

4. Regularly Monitor Networks and Software

Unusual network traffic patterns are an early sign that something’s not quite right. They’re often symptoms of infiltration, so pay attention to networks, look deeper at odd activity, and stop attackers in their tracks.

As for software, new vulnerabilities pop up constantly, especially if you experience frequent updates. Stay abreast of potential issues and communicate with providers if there’s unusual behavior or activity.

Consider software scanning tools like static analysis and dynamic analysis for software you create in-house.

5. Outline an Incident Response Plan

Even with the most robust information security posture, there’s still a chance that your team will experience a cyberattack. Be prepared to act quickly, just in case. This is where an incident response plan, or IRP, can help. It’s a formal document that tells you and your team how to minimize an attack’s impact.

An effective IRP should indicate:

• Key responsibilities of each team member: Who’s doing what in case of a cyber attack? 
  Detection and analysis next steps: What happened, and why?
• Containment: How can you make sure the problem won’t spread?
• Eradication: How will you eradicate the vulnerability to lessen impact and make sure it doesn’t happen again?
• Recovery: How do you plan to recover from a financial and consumer trust standpoint
• Operations: What operations will you maintain while you deal with the attack? And how?

6. Consider ASPM to Give You the SDLC Visibility You Need

A lot goes into developing risk posture. Implementing external tools can streamline and automate the improvement while reducing lift for your team.

An Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) platform, like Legit Security, gives your team a holistic look into software security practices and what elements of your attack surface might be vulnerable. And after spotting gaps for you, an ASPM can suggest what to do and how, making the resolution process much smoother.

Leverage Legit Security to Improve Your Security Posture

A strong cybersecurity posture can’t completely avoid cyberattacks, but it mitigates damage from day one.

Legit Security’s ASPM platform can play a critical role in your security posture. It can help you quickly know your software security risks, prioritize and solve potential vulnerabilities, and gain peace of mind.

Reach out for a demo and learn how Legit Security can help you better your cybersecurity framework

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Legit Security Blog authored by Legit Security. Read the original post at: https://www.legitsecurity.com/blog/how-to-improve-security-posture