Assessing and Understanding Your Organization's Security Posture

Provided by Consolidated Communications, a valued Alliance Partner of HaneyBiz

Is your organization prepared to defend against security threats?

How susceptible is your business to security threats? The reality is that no matter what industry you are in and no matter how large or small your company is, you are at risk of data breaches and other cyber threats. Those incidents can cost your company in many ways. While risk mitigation efforts come with costs, those costs pale in comparison to the financial, regulatory, and reputational risks businesses face when their cyber security efforts fail.
So, how prepared is your organization? If you’re not prepared to answer that question, it’s time for a detailed assessment of your organization’s security posture.

Security Posture: The Basics

Simply put, your “security posture” is the status of your company’s IT infrastructure, and its preparedness to ward off would-be attackers.

Your security posture involves your business systems and information, your people and processes, and software and hardware. More than simply each of those elements on an individual basis, your security posture also encompasses the dependencies and interrelatedness between them, as well as the capabilities you have in place to protect them.
Finally, your company’s security posture also includes your capacity to change, adapting to ever-evolving threats in the information technology and cybersecurity landscape

Assessing Your Threat Susceptibility and Preparedness

To truly evaluate your organization’s current security posture and conduct an effective threat assessment, you need to have a solid picture of your organization’s risks, including SaaS, social networking, and other applications used, web browsing activity, file transfer types and applications, and potential threats.
A threat assessment should help you address the following questions:

• What applications are running on your network?
• How much bandwidth do applications use?
• Which applications pose the greatest risk to your organization?
• What types of web-browsing activities pose the highest risk in your company?
• What types of files and applications are used to transfer information across your network?
• Are there system flaws that could be exploited?
• Is there previously-undetected malware, spyware, or viruses?
• How quickly are you able to get information about your current security status?
• Are your current systems and processes in compliance with all applicable standards?
• Are you able to quickly and nimbly implement new security policies?
• How quickly can you correlate IP addresses with users?
• Can you easily see and manage encrypted applications, or those that are tunneled or use port hopping?
• Do you have the capability of easily running reports showing which employees ran certain applications or processes?
  

Takeaways from the Security Posture Assessment Process

Most organizations lack the tools to adequately review their own security postures, and to conduct industry comparisons. Finding a resource to provide an assessment would be beneficial to any business, large or small. Consolidated Communications does offer a complimentary Security Lifecycle Review designed to help companies gain greater visibility into their systems can provide great insight on where a business may choose to focus and improve their security strength.
After reviewing several key areas of your information security infrastructure, we prepare a customized report detailing our review and bench marking your security preparedness to other companies in your industry. Your report will include an executive summary with our key findings, giving you the numbers you need at a glance. From there, you can dive into each of the review categories to explore our analysis in detail. We also provide tailored recommendations, to help guide you as you work to strengthen your company’s security posture.
By understanding your security posture better, you can take action to improve it. Ultimately, this should help you improve threat prevention, more effectively identify threats when they occur, and reduce resulting downtime
Working with a trusted partner for your business’ communication and networking needs can help put the tools you need in your hands.

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