Cybercrime costs companies in the United States over half a billion dollars annually.
Businesses can avoid such hefty avoidable costs by keeping their data, systems, and networks protected with a comprehensive cybersecurity plan in place.
A cybersecurity plan is a written document consisting of information about a business’s security policies, procedures, and countermeasures. The goal of a cybersecurity plan is to ensure the integrity of business operations along with securing a company’s IT assets. It improves business productivity, while playing a critical role in the decision-making process, and helps achieve business objectives.
Key Components of an Effective Cybersecurity Plan
A cybersecurity plan enables every part of a business, including staff, processes, and technologies, to establish a robust cybersecurity front. Here are the key elements that should be included in a cybersecurity plan.
1. Assessment of the Current Security Status
In order to put powerful cybersecurity measures in place, a business should have a clear idea of their existing cybersecurity capabilities. A well-defined cybersecurity plan will include detailed information about the business’s assets and capabilities, enabling timely security actions in the right direction. This plan can also help businesses ensure that their security policies are being fully enforced. The plan should include policies for:
- Management and classification of information
- Relationship with suppliers
- Business continuity plan
- Physical and environmental security
- Firewall set up
- Intrusion Detection System (IDS)
- Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) systems
- Automated security monitoring and alert systems
- Spam filters and anti-phishing
- Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) for back-end administrative access
- Strong passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Encryption of sensitive data
- Security software for mobile devices
2. Identification of Internal Stakeholder
Internal stakeholders such as managers, board of directors, and investors can help create and implement new security strategies. They can also create awareness about them, and influence as well as reinforce security measures among employees.
Businesses must identify and collaborate with internal stakeholders to proactively mitigate cybersecurity breaches. Most importantly, every stakeholder should have a predetermined role in responding to an incident, which should be mentioned in the cybersecurity plan.
3. Listing of IT Assets
Identifying and listing IT assets in the cybersecurity plan helps businesses become aware of all their valuable IT resources, such as their networks, storage repositories, servers, and devices. Further, organizations are in a better position to analyze important data, and know if it is stored onsite or in the cloud or in a company CRM.
For each IT asset, businesses should gather the following information and include it in the cybersecurity plan:
- Software
- Hardware
- Data
- Interface
- End-users
- Purpose
- Criticality
- Functional requirements
- Support personnel
- IT security policies
- IT security architecture
- Network topology
- Information storage protection
- Information flow
- Technical security controls
- Physical security controls
- Environmental security
4. Identification of Methods for Threat Detection
A cybersecurity plan should include the most robust and viable methods for detecting potential threats that a business can face. Thorough risk assessment can be carried out to identify threats such as hacking, malware, natural disasters, system failure, and insider threats.
The assessment also determines the chances of the occurrence of the threats and the level of damage they can do, thereby allowing businesses to be prepared with the most formidable protection and defense.
Further, a cybersecurity plan should also incorporate procedures that assist businesses in performing a risk estimation and evaluation. This will help them select the right methods to mitigate the identified cybersecurity risks.
5. Procedure to Mitigate Potential Risks
The cybersecurity plan should mention robust protection methods to mitigate security threats. These methods include, but are not limited to:
- Implementation of software updates
- Installation of antivirus
- Backing-up critical data
- Securing business IT Infrastructure
- Implementation of multi-factor authentication
The cybersecurity plan should also incorporate defense measures such as installing firewalls, using anti-malware applications, and implementing protection techniques such as end-to-end data encryption and backups.
6. Regular Testing and Auditing
Procedures that enable the regular testing and auditing of the security tools and technology that the business uses should be clearly laid out in the cybersecurity plan. Here are the various reasons to include security testing in a cybersecurity plan.
- Security testing allows businesses to identify risks and threats to their IT infrastructure. The information extracted through security assessment assists businesses in determining incident response protocols and prepares them to respond to an actual cyber-attack.
- The inferences from security assessments should be included in the cybersecurity plan. This can be instrumental in proving that the business systems and software are safe to use, thereby instilling trust in potential clients and partners.
- The plan should also incorporate information regarding all the necessary regulatory compliance such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS that the business adheres to.
Organizations can take the help of local IT specialists to know more about state-specific compliance and include it in their cybersecurity plan. For instance, organizations in Denver can hire IT services Denver to learn about and ensure business compliance, while also avoiding unnecessary penalties.
7. User Guidelines and Best Practices for Employees to Follow
The cybersecurity plan should include guidelines for providing extensive security awareness training to employees so they can identify and prevent common cyber threats. The plan needs to adequately state how this training will be implemented. The cybersecurity plan should mention details regarding:
- Educating employees on data incident reporting procedure in the event of their system being infected by virus, phishing scams, and malware
- Emphasizing the importance of using strong passwords
- Highlighting the risks associated with installing unlicensed software on an organization’s systems.
- Identifying online links that are suspicious or from unknown sources
- Communicating the mobile device policy for company-owned and personally-owned devices
- Emphasizing on proper methods for data storage and device usage
Wrap Up
A cybersecurity plan helps businesses identify and protect their assets from the various cyber threats, while defining the current and future state of their cybersecurity space. It also gives them clarity on how to best reposition their organization for effective cybersecurity results. To be effective, the plan should cover several critical elements, such as threat identification methods, security procedures and policies, threat management and response, user education, as well as auditing and testing methods. Having an all-encompassing cybersecurity plan will keep your business safe, while bringing you the peace of mind that comes with knowing that all your cybersecurity concerns are sufficiently addressed.
