Meet and Exceed Information Security Metrics in SMEs with Data Security Training
Security metrics is a highly important aspect associated with information security management. These are the tools that the teams utilize to help facilitate decision making and to make more informed improvements in accountability and performance. The key behind IT security metrics is to ensure smooth business continuity and reduced risk for business damage. The metrics help with minimizing and preventing the impact of security incidents.
All in all, security metrics play a huge role in how efficiently your information security department operates. This is particularly more beneficial for small and medium enterprises who are already struggling with raising the bars for security measures within the setup with limited resources. And since information security metrics are of utmost importance in SMEs, it's only fair to consider information security training to meet and exceed these metrics. Regardless of the size of the business, training your team for information security metrics is crucial. The idea is to understand the importance of security metrics to use both technical and practical knowledge and expertise to meet them - better yet, exceed them.
As far as the generation perspective is concerned, SMEs should consider all the dimensions of information security including organizational, technical, conformity and human aspects. Having a wider approach enables the organization to stay competitive, alert, and prepared while providing stakeholders insights on information security structure and detailed processes of risk treatment. Data security training is all you need to enable your team to be able to identify the right metrics and measure the awareness and preparedness within the business.
Top Information Security Metrics that Training Can Help With
Effective management is the thin line between a strong security system and resources going to waste. And when you opt for information security training and certification such as CISSO and CISSP, for your team, it gives you the surety that your team is now ready to meet and exceed the metrics for all the right reasons. Here is the top information security teams need to focus on. These cybersecurity metrics should be tracked to ensure the utmost efficiency of SMEs business operations.
MTTI and MTTD
MTTI stands for Mean-Time-To-Identify while MTTD is for Mean-Time-To-Detect. Keeping an eye on these particular metrics helps the business figure out if this area is efficient. You can check the set standards for these metrics to find out the likelihood of a data breach and the loss it may incur as a result. Poor performance in this regard can be a major contributor to the loss. Using these factors as your ultimate KPIs can bring a great deal of benefits for your information security. CISOs and other team members use this KPI to measure and portray the long-term improvements a business can achieve. Training helps with the right understanding and usage of these metrics.
Known Present Vulnerabilities in The System
Realizing the number of sensitive and vulnerable assets in your environment is an essential cybersecurity metric that helps with determining the risk your business is exposed to. Managing patches and updates can be a complicated process, but training can help the team understand it to avoid loopholes that put a business in a risky position. The team can carry out a vulnerability scan and include all the sensitive assets to find out what steps need to be taken to improve your company's security posture. A vulnerability management program is necessary.
SSL Certificates Configuration
A file as small as an SSL certificate is important for certifying the ownership of a cryptographic key associated with a company or website, through which data is exchanged. The SSL certificate guarantees the transaction's authenticity. Monitoring security certificate requirements are important for the team to ensure the data exchange has been carried out on configured servers. A process that secures the exchange prevents the vulnerable data from falling into the wrong hands and saves your company from cybersecurity threat.
Corporate Network and Data Volume
Certain data needs to be kept under strict restrictions. Allowing all the employees to access sensitive data can put the business at risk. This is especially true when the data is accessed on a corporate network. In addition to ensuring the security of the corporate network, it is also important to monitor the size of data and the traffic volume to ensure your company's resources are safe from misuse. When downloading videos, software, applications, or a movie, a user may leave a door open for malware and botnets to enter the system and exploit the environments.
Access Authorization
The team must also keep an eye for the number of users authorized to access data assets. Information security management best practices include full control of users who have maximum access to sensitive data and other company resources. Keeping a track helps the team identify if someone's trying to access assets, systems, and data more than they need. Identifying these patterns can also help them adjust the authorization for 'super user' access and limit more entries to make the environment more secure.
Third Party Access
In some cases, access can also be granted to third parties for completing an activity or a project. It is essential to monitor the access throughout the period, and timely cancel it after the project is complete. The action needs to be taken in time. If you fail to do so, you are putting your company in a risky environment where the third party still has control over your data. In worst case scenarios, this data can be extracted and misused in the future. In case it's not the third party itself, the party that breaches the third-party's network can also expose your systems to threat at the same time.
Conclusion
Security metrics are the need of the hour. Keeping the technological explosion in mind, it is natural for organizations to change their structures and functioning, especially SMEs. Businesses are working in a highly vulnerable environment these days. Therefore, security issues need to be addressed and information security metrics should be treated as a top priority. With training, you can use these metrics to ensure your organization is operating in the right zone with minimum cybersecurity threat.
Get in touch with one of our information security experts to learn more about information security training.