Cybersecurity Program

Building and maintaining an effective cybersecurity program is critical in protecting your organization. Without a comprehensive program – that covers Policies & Procedures, asset management, baselines, 3rd-party risk, incident response and more – your organization becomes highly reactive to external and internal threat sources and vulnerabilities.

Fortreum can help develop an effective cybersecurity program that enables and facilitates informed decision-making across your organization and aligns cybersecurity to business objectives

Cybersecurity Framework (CSF): Key Tenets

When evaluating security program approaches, there are plenty of security frameworks out there to leverage (regulated/non-regulated)– which one makes sense for our organization?

We have seen the Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) successfully implemented across private and public sector. Let’s jump in the rationale and key tenants for a successful implementation.

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Contact us to discuss your cyber and cloud business needs. We’re happy to share our insights and work with you as your business evolves.

    Business Considerations

    Strategy & Planning

    The ability to measure the effectiveness of a cybersecurity program requires adequate strategy and planning with key stakeholders ensure business alignment. Solicit feedback and input from IT, sales/marketing and executive management to define company objectives and associated risk. Without an understanding of the business objectives and expectations, the cybersecurity program may be ineffective at a foundational level.

    Indicators of Proven Experience

    Ensure that your cybersecurity firm has experience in building and improving cybersecurity programs. It’s the right blend of people, process and technology – do they understand the lifecycle? Simply put, not all cyber firms have the experience and knowledge your organization needs.

    Regulatory Mandates

    A cybersecurity program must take all external requirements such as regulatory requirements, customer expectations and industry standards. Failure to include these requirements may lead to potential reputational harm and considerable revenue loss if a potential customer is unable or unwilling to utilize your products or services. Ensure that all industries your organization is selling into have the right regulatory approvals to conduct business.

    Program Assurance

    Gaining an understanding of how your organization’s cybersecurity program performs is an effective way to determine overall company risk. Many businesses invest considerable resources & personnel into a cybersecurity program, but fail to ever assess its effectiveness. Hiring an independent organization to assess the cybersecurity program provides unbiased and actionable information needed to validate your program.

    Why is Cybersecurity Program Development important?

    Cybersecurity program development provides cost-effective, repeatable, and scalable services to enable your organization to build an efficient program to manage risks within your organization.  Taking a wholistic view enables alignment of resources and personnel across your organization to focus on critical cyber risk areas as determined by your organization needs.   The focus areas will change over time as your program matures and enable your organization to take a proactive position in the identification, protection, response, and recovery against cyber risks.

    Why should my organization care?

    Business risk! Without a comprehensive cybersecurity program, an organization is ill-equipped to identify, protect, respond or recover from a cyber-attack or incident. A cybersecurity program incorporates all the required elements into a management view that allows allocation of resources and personnel based upon the business needs of the organization. As an example, some organizations may spend considerable resources on security documentation, but fail to properly implement security controls within their enterprise. Without clear communication and alignment between the various IT and cybersecurity teams, the business remains exposed to cyber risks. This wholistic view allows the incorporation of a management and system view into the current program capabilities, their effectiveness, and the ability to measure and track program performance. In summary, a mature cybersecurity program, improves the security posture of the organization by aligning IT, business, and cybersecurity functions and teams to provide a comprehensive capability and shared interdependency that ensures the program is operating as intended.