Cybersecurity Fall…I mean Spring Cleaning

 

As October winds down, we wanted to put a final emphasis on National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. This is a time to spread awareness of cybersecurity and get your cybersecurity house in order. You might be focused on software upgrades, firewalls, antivirus, and network monitoring device, but too often aspects of cybersecurity are overlooked or marked as not a priority throughout the year. As the month ends, lets refocus on activities that will not protect your company for just a week or a month but will create a year-round company culture around cybersecurity and planning. We do spring cleaning for our houses and offices, so why not our cybersecurity house?

What is Security Spring Cleaning?

The first step in cleaning a house is to come up with a plan. The same is true for your cybersecurity house. There are so many different aspects (rooms) of cybersecurity and it is essential to map out a strategy on how to manage it. Creating a plan is essential to cleaning your cybersecurity house. When it comes to cybersecurity, planning is protecting. “CIOs can’t protect their organizations from everything, so they need to create a sustainable set of controls that balances their need to protect their business with their need to run it,” Robert McMillian, research director at Gartner. 

One of the rooms that needs cleaning according to Nick Santora from Curricula’s Security Awareness Month Spring Cleaning blog is employee security, “Do you currently have security awareness training for employees in place? . . . Security awareness training is only as good as the processes and procedures you have put in place to help protect your employees.”

“Building out an effective cybersecurity program takes time, effort, and resources to focus on the end goals.” – Nick Santora

Organizations of all sizes need to take it one room at a time when cleaning up their cybersecurity house instead of trying to do it all at once. Don’t sweep issues under the rug, that isn’t a real long term solution. Instead pick one room and clean it up then move onto the next. 

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is an important reminder that you need to take cybersecurity seriously all year long. This includes your plan, platform, awareness training program, as well as staying compliant to any industry requirements. How are you going to make cybersecurity a priority when Cybersecurity Awareness Month ends and your program continues the remaining eleven months of the year?

Apptega provides a centralized platform to build, manage and report on your organization’s cybersecurity program. With Apptega, roles and responsibilities can be delegated and managed company-wide. Assigning roles and tasks to various employees across the organization provides visibility and accountability.  People can take responsibility and be held accountable to contribute toward a sound cybersecurity environment. While IT workers can use Apptega to track projects and documents,  CIOs and the board get the benefit of real-time reports that highlight the current state of the program. Apptega provides a user-friendly solution that helps codify the mentality of “fix it before it breaks.”

Check out this quick video to learn more about Apptega.