Suffering a breach is not an if, but more of a when. The more prepared your organization is to recognize an attack and mitigate it, the less impact a breach will have on your organization. Shortening the time it takes to detect an attack is the key to ensuring the security of your business.
Minimize Insider Threats
Start with training your staff to recognize their role in the company’s security. From using secure passwords, to Multifactor Authentication (MFA), to recognizing phishing emails when they see them, putting into place the necessary training to keep your staff from being unwitting participants in a hack is your first defense.
Minimize Your Attack Surface
The more ways there are to enter your systems, the harder it will be to defend. Consider Single Sign On capabilities and adopt Zero Trust thinking within your organization. Only give access to people who require access to those areas of the business.
Invest in Integrated System Monitoring
The fastest way to identify a cyber attack is by continuous monitoring of your systems. There are hundreds of tools to help you monitor your systems, from endpoint detection and response (EDR) programs to Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems to aggregate and prioritize logs, and new AI and Automation tools to work to evaluate signals in your network. For the best monitoring, you also need a team of cybersecurity professionals whose certified knowledge and understanding of cyber threats can help quickly determine threats to your data. These teams of professionals and their tools are known as a Security Operations Center (SOC).
Security Operations Centers (SOC)
SOCs run 24/7/365 with a talent pool of cybersecurity professionals certified in many different areas of security to ensure as much coverage for diverse types of threats as possible. This usually means a minimum of 3 shifts of people with redundancies for health and vacation leave.
SOCs Come in a Few Flavors
On Premises (On-Prem) SOCs are often used by large, expansive organizations with a large threat surface, with a significant number of endpoints to monitor and consistent ongoing threats. The investment in an On-Prem SOC is no laughing matter. From staff and training to infrastructure including hardware and software, to time to build and maintain, a small startup On-Prem SOC could cost you $1M to $7M a year with the effectiveness of your SOC growing with further sophistication and investment. On-Prem SOCs can be highly specific to your organization and should be your go-to in a highly volatile environment. Examples of On-Prem SOCs might include large federal agencies and most of the companies on the S&P 100 that have a large attack surface and highly motivated attackers.
Cloud based SaaS SOCs, also known as SOCaaS (Security Operations Center as a Service), are a much more affordable option for most organizations. If you need services quickly, the time to start with a SOCaaS is much shorter than an On-Prem solution, as you do not need to hire a team, buy equipment, and find space for the team. In most cases, you will only pay for what you expect to use and can scale services up and down based on your business requirements. Many SOCaaS fees include EDR and SIEM subscriptions as well, so you will not need to pay another vendor for those services. SOCaaS can work for organizations of every size, from 100 to 1,000,000+ endpoints. These solutions vary in price but in many cases for smaller organizations (<100 employees), can cost less that the annual salary of one senior engineer.
The cybersecurity professionals at MindPoint Group and our SOC specialists at MPGSOC can help you determine if your organization is ready to handle a data breach. From planning and staff training to fully 24/7 monitoring, the team at MindPoint Group can help you achieve a strong cybersecurity posture and help you focus on your mission for your customers.
