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5 Steps to Security Validation by Tracey Moon

5 Steps to Security Validation

In today’s world, cybersecurity is about the need for speed. From security professionals to those in the C-Suite, organizations need to react quickly to reduce detection time and the ability to respond to an attack.

June 4, 2020

In today’s world, cybersecurity is about the need for speed. From security professionals to those in the C-Suite, organizations need to react quickly to reduce detection time and the ability to respond to an attack.

June 4, 2020
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How prepared are you to prevent the exfiltration of data?

How do you know if you are susceptible to the latest types of attacks?

How do you know if a bad actor group has compromised you?

In today’s world, cybersecurity is about the need for speed. From security professionals to those in the C-Suite, organizations need to react quickly to reduce detection time and the ability to respond to an attack.

Recently, Major General Earl Matthews USAF (Ret), our Vice President of Strategy, participated in webinar 5 Steps to Security Validation, where he shared insights into what organizations can do to validate that their business-critical assets are protected from an attack or beach. Unfortunately, too many organizations continue to manage cybersecurity based on best guesses and assumptions – and as have we seen in the headlines, that can be dangerous, as attacks are becoming more targeted and more sophisticated.

To add further complexity, organizations and individuals are increasingly relying on and adding more information technology – and not just in the form of technology for business process, but also, for the Internet of Things (IoT). Then add to this the amount of data that has expanded exponentially and scarcity of security skillsets that we are seeing in the industry.

Without a doubt, cyber attacks will only continue to grow in frequency, and when an organization leaves its cybersecurity unchecked, four major problems arise:

  1. Excessive tool overlap
  2. Underutilized controls
  3. Poor change management
  4. Heightened risk of data loss

So, what can an organization do to protect itself? Security validation. Security validation ensures that organizations have the ability to continuously test and monitor against real-world attack behaviors to validate security effectiveness. Only then can organizations identify risks within their security controls before an attack occurs and have the “right” information needed to optimize and rationalize their defenses.  

To get there, organizations need to implement the following five steps to security validation:

  • Establish KPIs for Measuring Cybersecurity Effectiveness: Produce quantitative metrics that can speak to the business by removing the technical speak.
  • Optimize and Rationalize Portfolio: Optimize what an organization already has and gain insights to quantify impact.
  • Build Tailored Readiness Scorecards: Build alignment across the business – from mission leaders to the defenders, the Red Team, and threat intelligence.  
  • Combat Defensive Regression: Continuously test for unintentional configuration changes and errors that put mission-critical assets at risk.
  • Understand Risk without Assumptions: Need the ability to make evidence-based decisions so that cyber risk strategies are not reliant on assumptions.

The time is NOW for organizations to minimize risk and strengthen cyber hygiene – and to get there, they must validate security effectiveness. Only through automated, continuous monitoring and measurement against real-world attack behaviors can companies gain insights that validate security controls are working as they should.

Interested in learning how you can validate your controls against real attacks and security vulnerabilities? Watch the on-demand webinar 5 Steps to Security Validation, and visit here to download a full copy of the Mandiant Security Effectiveness Report 2020.

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Tracey Moon

Vice President, Marketing, Mandiant Security Validation

Tracey leads the team responsible for overall brand vision, strategy, and more.


*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Verodin Blog authored by Verodin Blog. Read the original post at: https://www.verodin.com/post/5-steps-to-security-validation