7 Important Cybersecurity Questions That Can Transform Your Business in 2024

With the advancement in technology and increase in the rise of cyber-crimes, the cybersecurity has become an important aspect of all businesses of all sizes. The cyber-threats have become more sophisticated, innovative, and evolving rapidly. Even a single data breach can cause so much of harm to the organization including financial losses, reputational damage, and legal liability. To protect the organizations from such attacks, demand for cybersecurity professionals is higher than ever.

Moreover, it also becomes necessary for the organizations to have a proper cybersecurity strategy in place. This can include having the right cybersecurity policies, procedures, and technologies in place to protect organizations from different kinds of cyber threats.

So, where do the organizations start from? With so many cybersecurity solutions available in the market, it becomes difficult to understand from where to get started and where to focus first. These following seven questions can help with that.

1. What are the major risks to your business outcomes?

This is the first question to ask while developing an efficient cybersecurity strategy – what are the major risks to your business outcomes. Identify these risks is first and foremost thing to do and it includes considering different types of data you collect and store, the industry you work in, supply chain, etc.

Once you know what could be the probable risks, you will be able to start developing strategies to mitigate these risks.

2. What are your critical assets?

Having identified the major cybersecurity risks, you must look out for critical assets – the assets that are most important to your business such as customer database, IT infrastructure, intellectual property, etc.

By identifying these critical assets, you can focus on your cybersecurity measures to protect them. Many top cybersecurity certification programs include risk management as an important concept in their curriculum that will teach you how to identify these assets.

3. What are the most important costs needed to achieve the security outcomes?

Cybersecurity can become expensive so it becomes another thing to identify the right security solutions to invest on which will help in protecting the business. Budgeting for cybersecurity must include following points into consideration:

• Hardware and software cost
• IT staff cost
• Consulting fees
• Training cost for preparing IT professionals for their cybersecurity career

Responding and recovering cost must also be included while preparing the cost estimates. This includes costs associated with downtime, lost data, regulatory fines, etc.

4. What are the security gaps in the organization?

Well, the organizations must understand there is no perfect strategy in the field of cybersecurity. The cyber-criminals are getting more advanced and have the potential to breach any kind of security systems.  However, with their cybersecurity skills, the risks can be reduced.

By conducting security assessments, vulnerability scans, penetration testing, cybersecurity professionals can identify the security gaps and avoid serious impacts due to cyber-crimes.

5. How are you monitoring your organization’s cybersecurity posture?

After implementing the proper cybersecurity posture, it becomes important to monitor it on regular basis and identify if it needs any improvement and upgradation. This helps in identifying and responding to different kinds of cyber threats promptly.

Monitoring the security strategy can be done in several ways such as using security information and event management system (SIEM) tools and managed security service providers (MSSPs).

6. How are you responding to security incidents?

This is one thing why certified cybersecurity experts are paid handsomely – to respond to security incidents efficiently and minimize the risks associated with cyber-attacks. An efficient cybersecurity strategy should have a plan in place to respond to cyber-attacks promptly and it includes identifying the incident, containing the damage, and recovering from the incident.

7. How are you educating your employees about cybersecurity?

Any organization consists of several departments consisting of technical and non-technical professionals. But cybersecurity is something that everyone must be aware of, right from low-level executives to top board members.

Organizations can therefore take advantage of the best cybersecurity certification programs to empower the employees with necessary cybersecurity skills to perform their duties securely at their own levels. The employees should be trained about phishing awareness, password security, social engineering, and others in general. Also, the training should be conducted on regular basis to ensure the employees are up to date with the latest cybersecurity practices.

Conclusion

Cybersecurity as we know should be among the top priorities of the organization. And ensuring a proper cybersecurity strategy in place means ensuring a cyber-safe organization as well. These seven questions can be very helpful by serving as the foundational steps for developing an efficient cybersecurity strategy. Identifying the business outcome, its risks, the cost involved in ensuring organization’s security, monitoring the security strategy, and upgrading it on regular basis is of utmost importance. Not to forget, training employees with the right cybersecurity practices is another thing to do. By answering these questions, organization and top cybersecurity professionals can effectively design an efficient cybersecurity posture for their organization.