5 High-Value Cyber Security Solutions
Security consulting firms can offer a wealth of knowledge in protecting your business from the latest cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities. The best security firms provide an array of security consulting services to help mitigate attacks and protect your business from future threats.
In this blog, we share five high-value cyber security solutions that security consultants are using to help companies stay secure and resilient in today’s modern threat landscape.
Vulnerability Assessments
Surprisingly, only 74 percent of companies that suffer a data breach today know how it happened. Professional security consultants use vulnerability assessments to help you identify and classify security gaps in your IT hardware, software applications, or other parts of the network.
A vulnerability assessment identifies the gaps but will not typically explore how the vulnerabilities are used during a cyber attack.
Vulnerability assessments typically expose security gaps such as unpatched applications and operating systems, configuration mistakes such as exposing vulnerable services to the Internet, network design flaws, and possible weaknesses in physical security design and user awareness.
When conducting a vulnerability assessment, security consultants may use the same tools that potential hackers are using so they can replicate the same techniques and methods employed by a threat actor.
5 Strategic Reasons to Use Security Consulting Services. Read more here.
Penetration Testing
Security consultants can use penetration tests and information from your vulnerability assessment to explore how vulnerabilities in your environment can be exploited.
A professional security consultant will use penetration testing to check and scan any new system or application with potential exploits and identify how an attack would leverage those vectors. A penetration test should be performed on a regular basis as a security consulting services offering.
Expert security consulting firms perform penetration testing regularly and whenever you add new infrastructure, update systems, install software, or relocate equipment.
A knowledgeable security consulting firm will also be able to provide you with a categorization of risk in the penetration testing, such as high, medium, and low-risk vulnerabilities.
Download our comprehensive guide to pentesting!
SIEM Monitoring Systems
Monitoring your security events can offer insightful information for improving your security. An expert professional security consultant will recommend Security Incident & Event Management (SIEM) monitoring to give your organization a holistic view of any deliberate attack or unauthorized access to your networks, systems, devices, and information. Monitoring trends, along with ROI analysis, will help to prioritize mitigation and remediation.
It is important for any organization’s security strategy to detect and report attack incidents as they happen. A security consultant can monitor events using SIEM and provide insightful information for security improvements as well as create enhancements for your security detection process.
An MSSP does this by creating additional content on the SIEM to help identify anomalous activity and generate actionable alerts. This combination enables SOC analysts and incident responders to respond and stop attacks quickly and effectively. An experienced MSSP can provide immense value compared to just a SIEM with out-of-the-box content managed by internal staff.
By leveraging numerous threat intelligence feeds and knowledge of Indicators of Compromise, pairing an MSSP with your existing SIEM is the best way to maintain a high level of security. Your process should consist of multiple stages to properly categorize the lifecycle of a security incident.
An accredited security consultant can provide the expertise to create a tailored Threat Lifecycle for your security incident response. In conclusion, security monitoring goes beyond just implementing the technology, a SIEM solution. It requires people and processes as well.
Activities such as Asset Modeling prioritizes your assets based on criticality to calculate alert severity, Network Modeling makes sense of the topology of your network and facilitates identification of attack vectors as well as choke points where attacks can be stopped.
In any case, to optimize security, a comprehensive approach must be used to combat all the challenges organizations face today.
Business Continuity Planning
Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is often an overlooked area within the range of security consulting services. BCP is the creation of a strategy through which the recognition of threats and risks posed by unplanned events enable the company to continue business operations.
Unplanned events include disruptions to electrical power or networks, attack by a threat organization, natural disaster, civil unrest, and epidemic or pandemic.
Along with a definition of roles and succession, communication plans, and descriptions of the business function and resiliency of various systems, BCP contains collections of Disaster Recovery plans for each of those systems and defines Maximum Tolerable Downtime, Recovery Time Objectives, and Recovery Point Objectives.
Professional security consultants work with you to build a comprehensive plan, including procedures, processes, and testing, to ensure a state of continuity with business critical systems.
A Business Continuity Plan will designate a Business Continuity Coordinator or Manager to execute the BCP if an unplanned event causes disruption. Not only does Business Continuity ensure operations continue, but it also means that it builds confidence with your customers, investors, and adds additional compliance benefits for various regulatory requirements.
Cybersecurity Training
Yet another missing piece to many security consulting services is cybersecurity training. A damaging potential threat to your organization could be your workforce.
According to Infosecurity Magazine, internal actors are reported to be responsible for 43% of data loss, half of which is intentional, and half accidental.
Therefore, company-wide training is one of the most underutilized ways to prevent costly security mishaps. A professional security consultant can build a cybersecurity awareness training program that helps your employees gain a better understanding of overall security policies and best practices for the organization.
Security consulting firms offer a variety of cybersecurity training topics. The main areas typically include securing desktops and workstations, firewalls and Virtual Private Networks, recommended password security, how to avoid phishing scams, and educating end users about malware, viruses, worms, and a myriad of other infectious programs designed to wreak havoc on a business and its users.
Cybersecurity training and security awareness training will provide your organization with the knowledge and information to properly handle a situation that may arise during various security vulnerability scenarios.
Successful security consultants aim to build a business partnership with their clients and become a trusted expert in addressing all types of security challenges. They do this by leveraging the people, process, and technology required to implement a security focused culture. A cybersecurity consulting firm will bring you hands-on experience and latest information to stay up-to-date on the security field.
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