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3 Best Practices for Maintaining Cyber Hygiene and Performing a Cybersecurity Audit
With new, evolving security risks and complex, ever-changing security mandates, many organizations find navigating through security compliance more complex than ever. But, as cyber-attacks become more sophisticated and grow in frequency and scale, addressing the challenges is critical for organizations needing to comply with regulatory requirements and proactively manage security risks.
In Navigating GRC with Some Help from CTI, the first of a two-part podcast series, Cybersixgill’s Chris Strand, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, and Delilah Schwartz, Security Strategist, discuss the intersection between Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) and Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI). GRC is a framework of rules, practices, and processes that helps to align IT and business goals, manage risks, and meet government and industry regulations. Companies that use GRC have met compliance requirements, which can help to build trust with their customers and remove uncertainty about risks and vulnerabilities.
Implementing GRC is a necessary but daunting task. One of the biggest challenges organizations face as they undergo an audit is proving to the auditor that their systems are doing what they are supposed to do. To help organizations make it through the audit process as smoothly as possible, Chris shares three insider tips for an effective GRC program:
Visibility Into the Attack Surface: Organizations need to understand what it is they are trying to defend, and in order to do that, they need visibility into the attack surface. For instance, is there an AWS server that is still open, or privileges that have not been properly managed?
Vulnerability and Gap Analysis: Organizations need to proactively look for and prioritize in real-time vulnerabilities and areas of possible data exposure.
Rank Vulnerabilities: Organizations need to understand and rank vulnerabilities. For instance, what is the probability of a risk, how can existing controls help to mitigate that risk, and what are the key vulnerabilities?
Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is critical as organizations go through these key steps. For instance, without CTI, how can they prove in an audit that the presented vulnerabilities are the most risky? Organizations can only do so by enriching their findings with contextual data. With this enhanced proof, they can show an auditor that they are doing what they are supposed to do, are protecting data, and understand their vulnerabilities and risks.
Want to learn more about the best practices to ensure compliance and how to identify vulnerabilities and bridge security gaps? Listen to our podcast series Defense Against the Dark Web.
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