How cybersecurity can future-proof your business
Leaders must weave business strategy with proactive security measures—building a culture of security.
March 16, 2021 | By: Kory Patrick
There is no such thing as a “typical” security organization. The spectrum ranges all over the map. And often, we don’t see security as an organizational focal point. Many times, security is seen as an impediment of going to market, of rolling out new products or new lines of business. Organizations struggle with finding the balance between the right level of security and where it should be integrated.
With an accelerated pace of change and increasing digital disruption, leaders must start to weave their business strategy with proactive security measures, building a culture of security that not only enables your business but future-proofs it.
Inject security into your business decisions for future sustainability
Security works well when it’s involved in all business decisions and infused in the organization’s culture. There is often a large disconnect—security organizations understand infrastructure and technologies within an enterprise from a technical perspective, but not always how the business leverages that tech. The gold standard? Being in lockstep with the business and involved in business decisions.
A common conundrum when infusing security into the organization is the focus on tools and technology—without the strategy. There’s frequently an emphasis and sense of urgency to adopt new technology without a security strategy that clarifies what the tool is trying to accomplish. Be sure to focus on the process and strategy piece, aligning your tools and technology to them. Investing in several tools that do the same thing is not a sustainable way to enable your business with security.
There is no such thing as a “typical” security organization.
The pandemic will have a lasting impact on tech security
Leading organizations are using the pandemic and other current security failures as an opportunity to reset their security strategy, improve alignment and imbed security into the culture of the organization, ultimately enabling business to drive successful outcomes.
Early in the pandemic, many organizations struggled because of a lack of maturity around identity access management (IAM). Because they couldn’t remotely onboard or provision access the way they needed to, business (and progress) took a hit. The acceleration of digital transformation initiatives introduced new technology, processes and workflows that must be accounted for and secured. In the months since, this reality has been alleviated or adapted, but the root of the issue is that companies don’t have the infrastructure needed to execute on these remote activities. Good plans and strategies were supposedly in place but not tested for the load size.
Moving forward, everything will have a lens of data privacy and compliance. That lens includes how we enable data privacy and compliance, and how business will react to this new data risk. There will be a material cost to respond to data risk that organizations will need to consider. For instance, ransomware is already huge, but now you’ll have to deal with privacy and litigation with everything you do.
By evaluating your security strategies and policies, you’ll mind the gaps that have been created and follow through on addressing and fixing the disruptions.
Kory Patrick is a risk and security practice leader at TEKsystems. He leads advisory and consulting services for the enterprise environment focused on reducing risk to the business by addressing security, privacy and compliance challenges through effective governance, identity and operations management in cloud, on-premise and remote environments.
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