Even in the long far ago of yesteryear shrewd lords put a lot of time and effort into securing their treasures. They built castles to defend the most valuable of these treasures, and I can assure you that castles were not cheap to construct or maintain. Castles added no direct benefit to production, but they were necessary. Information Security efforts are the exact same. Even if your organization is not under the umbrella of any federal or state compliance agencies, routine Information Security efforts are hugely beneficial to long-term ROI, because proper Information Security audits, tests, and assessments, while not direct revenue drivers, help to ensure organizational data is protected.
In the modern age, as businessmen and women, our most valuable treasures are our customer records, our critical business data, our websites, etc., and these resources can’t be protected by simply putting a wall around them.
In the digital age of internet of everything (IOE), almost anyone from almost anywhere with an internet connection can have access to our most valuable treasures.
Savvy organizations will certainly have bright IT personnel on staff and will do their best to build a digital castle around the data they are trusted to protect. However, some organizations tend to put more emphasis on production than security, so year over year the castle walls erode.
That’s where Information Security efforts come in to play. Organizations like Cybien focuses on security alone and trains to think like an attacker. Cybien’s entire purpose is to aid in the construction and reconstruction of digital walls. Cybien, safely and with a methodical approach, attacks elements of an organizations security and IT infrastructure to ensure the protection mechanisms in place are functioning as intended and that an organization’s treasures are safely stowed away.
Cybien is like the Norse Raiders of the Viking Age, except Cybien will write up a detailed report, give back all the treasure, and ensures customer satisfaction.
If you haven’t considered it before, now is the time to start thinking about your organizations Information Security efforts. Have you had a recent test to ensure customer and client information is secure? If not, a good starting point would be to consider one of the following tests.
External Vulnerability Testing –
Commonly, a Vulnerability Assessment consists of an automated tool being utilized to scan and identify vulnerabilities on a network, and generally, the end product is the raw scan results with a logo. That’s not good enough.
Automated tools routinely produce false positives, so CYBIEN manually validates identified vulnerabilities. We also go a step further and provide data reduction and identify high-level threats, so you can spend time correcting deficiencies, not making sense of hundreds of pages of raw output. We are confident our Vulnerability Assessments will rival or surpass the majority of Penetration Tests on the market.
External Penetration Testing –
Penetration testing, sometimes referred to as Pen Testing, is a valuable way to emulate and determine how resistant your organization’s digital infrastructure is to both insider and outsider threats, so even if you aren’t under any regulatory mandates, Penetration Testing is worthwhile.
Social Engineering Testing –
The human element of any Information Security Program is often one of the most unpredictable. Some of the most well thought out and robust security programs have been defeated by a threat piggybacking behind an employee, finding passwords in dumpsters, or by simply being let in. This can be tested either onsite or remotely.
Continue the journey of ensuring your organizational data is protected by limiting or eliminating password reuse, deleting emails from unknown or suspicious senders, and enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) where appropriate.
Check out all the services of Cybien at CYBIEN.COM
Author:
Jeremy Walker
Head of Cyber Security
Copper Ink
