There is no doubt that the Cybersecurity Threat Landscape is changing on a continual basis. Day by day, newer threat variants are emerging, even from the old traditional ones. IT Security teams are overburdened, taxed to their limits, and also facing burnout in various extremes. But still, they are asked to perform their job functions on a daily basis and combat whatever they are faced with. Thus, in this regard, newer ways have to be introduced so that they can always be on their “A-Game.”
This is the focal point of this article.
The Top 5 Ways To Keep Your IT Security Staff Sharp
Although security training for every employee is crucial in this regard, it is only just one part of the entire picture. There are other essential pieces to fulfill as well, and these are as follows:
- Get the buy-in from the C-Suite:
It is important to note that the IT Security team simply cannot act by themselves or even take any decision-making powers under their own authority. Thus, they must get the full support from the entire C-Suite, especially that of the CIO and/or CISO. In today’s times, there is often a disconnect that arises between them and the IT Department as a whole. This bridge needs to be gapped, at whatever cost. This is purely a psychological factor. Once the IT Security team knows that they have the unwavering support of their CIO and/or CISO, they will feel a lot more confident in what they do, as well as motivated, because they will know that everybody is on the same page. This will finally result in a much stronger sense of motivation and purpose in order to keep the lines of defense as strong and secure as possible. - Identify the game plan to keep your Digital Assets safe:
The IT Security team simply cannot put out fires on the cyber threat landscape in a haphazard, or unorthodox fashion. It takes an organized approach in order to create the most effective strategies. Thus, it is imperative for the members of the team of what is most at risk in the organization, and what are the lesser priorities. Here, it is very important to launch a comprehensive and extensive risk-based analysis of all of the Digital Assets that reside from within your company. Essentially, you will be assigning a particular level of risk for each type of asset, using a categorization scheme. For example, you may deem that the Personal Identifiable Information (PII) data sets are most at risk to a Cyberattack. You may denote this with a numerical value of 10, to show its significance. Because of this, the IT Security team will then realize that this is an area that needs the most level of hardening. This process will continue in an iterative fashion until all of the digital assets have been accounted for. By having such a system in place, the members of the team will be able to triage alerts and warnings in a much more efficient and effective manner. - Focus your training:
As it was mentioned earlier, security training is very important. But not all employees need to receive the same levels of it. For example, the IT Security team will need a very specialized kind of training, than say the Finance or Accounting departments. This will include training on the latest threat variants that have come about and some of the best tools that can be used to combat them. This kind of training will need to take place at least on a weekly basis, as opposed to the training that is given to the other employees, which can be done on a quarterly basis. - Keep the training engaging:
Even to your IT Security team, the training that you give them has to be made, for lack of a better term, more “entertaining.” Remember, they live and breathe this stuff on an almost constant, 24 X 7 X 365 basis. So, in order to keep them engaged, you have to come up with a new way in order to keep them inspired and motivated. In this regard, you can use a tool called “Storytelling.” With this kind of methodology, you are trying to elicit an emotional response so that it will be easier to remember all of the information/data that you are presenting to them. A typical example of this would be to tell a story of how Company XYZ used this new tool to combat the latest threat variant, with great success. As a result of this, your IT Security team will become much more engaged in learning about the tool that was used, and how they could possibly fit it into their own environment. By doing this, the team members could become inspired to conduct an audit to see if the other security technologies they are using are up to snuff, and if not, provide recommendations to the CIO and/or CISO as to what can be done to further improve the situation. Also, it is key to make use of real-world, simulated training attacks, such as dividing your IT Security team into blue and red teams. Here, you can use a training concept known as “Cyber Ranges.” - Create security policies that are all-encompassing:
The traditional view here is that this task is only left up to the upper levels of management to do. But this is far from reality. Whenever your company creates the security policies or even updates, it is absolutely crucial that as far as possible, you get all, if not most, of the members of your IT Security team to be involved. By doing this, not only will the members feel that their input and ideas are highly valued, but you’ll have all the input from the people that are on the Cybersecurity front lines every day. They will have real-world knowledge as to what will work best as well as not when crafting these kinds of plans. In this regard, you will be creating virtual machines onto a cloud-based platform, such as that of Microsoft Azure, in order to effectively launch “Capture The Flag” (“CTF”) exercises. This does work, and according to a recent study, 96% of IT Security teams witnessed a dramatic uptick in the benefits they gained by conducting such exercises.
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Conclusions
Remember, keeping your IT Security team motivated to do their best at all times requires the unique combination of training, making them feel valued, as well as knowing what is most important to protect. If you need help in achieving all of this, we are here to help you and your company. We can recommend the best training resources for your environment. Contact us today for more information!
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