Cybersecurity is Everyone’s Job!

When we say See Yourself in Cyber, we mean see yourself in cyber no matter what role you play. As an individual or consumer, take basic steps to protect your online information and privacy. Vendors and suppliers can take ownership of their role, while protecting their brand and reputation, by putting strong cybersecurity in place at work to help prevent an incident at your location or further down the supply chain. Learn how your organization plays a part in ensuring cybersecurity for the larger ecosystem. Finally, there is a global need for skilled, diverse workers with technical skills to meet the cyber challenges of today and tomorrow, so find out if this is the career field for you.

Building a cybersmart organization in today’s fast-moving digital world requires a management system that includes a framework for benchmarking security efforts. The first step is performing a gap analysis that will:

• Help you to understand the robustness and effectiveness of cybersecurity programs and practices.
• Help you gauge how cybersecurity efforts align to your organizational strategy.
• Emphasize tracking and use of performance metrics to drive decision making.
• Understand what must be done to spread effective use of the management system and cybersecurity framework.
• Support the improvement of your organizations’ performance and sustainability/competitiveness.

To identify the gap, the starting point is to compare what we have with a blended of the critical infrastructure cybersecurity elements (That include cybersecurity standards, guidelines, practices and references) with the leading edge of validated leadership and performance practices. This blended constitutes the proposed management system.

It is intended for use by leaders and manages who are concerned with and responsible for an organization’s mission-driven, cybersecurity-related policy and operations. The gap analysis is most valuable as a voluntary self-assessment of the entire organization’s cybersecurity risk management program; it is also useful in assessing a subunit, multiple subunits, or parts of an organization. Ideally, suppliers and partners also should use it since they can have immediate and extensive impacts on cybersecurity risks. As a result, beyond the gap; you will get a better understanding of the effectiveness of cybersecurity risk-management efforts and you will identify improvement opportunities in the context of your overall organizational performance while illuminating key information about organizational and cybersecurity leaders, cybersecurity in the context of the organization’s overall strategy, cybersecurity needs and expectations of internal and external customers, measurement of cybersecurity performance in the context of overall performance measurement, the overall workforce and the workforce with special cybersecurity responsibilities, the overall and cybersecurity-specific suppliers and partners, cybersecurity operations and their alignment with overall operations, cybersecurity risks in the context of broader enterprise risks, and results related to each of these areas.

It is often said that a team is only as strong as its weakest player, and the best defense is a good offense. To manage risks and ensure continuity of operations, it’s imperative that all leaders and managers take a direct role in motivating their people to remain cyber aware—especially in today’s maximum telework space, where so many remote workers are connecting to network services from outside their organization’s boundaries.

Think of cybersecurity as a team sport, in which all players must make and implement strategic decisions about risks, policies, and operations. In our next publication we will share and inspired by the information security and cybersecurity practice, we will share six tips from which every business playbook can benefit to create an environment for sustainable success now and in the future.

We also invite you to participate in the Cybersecurity Month!

This year’s campaign theme — “See Yourself in Cyber” — demonstrates that while cybersecurity may seem like a complex subject, ultimately, it’s really all about people. This October the focus is on the “people” part of cybersecurity, providing information and resources to help educate the public, and ensure all individuals and organizations make smart decisions whether on the job, at home or at school – now and in the future. We encourage each of you to engage in this year’s efforts by creating your own cyber awareness campaigns and sharing this messaging with your peers.

We are here to help!

JUST FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

Since 2004, the President of the United States and Congress have declared October to be Cybersecurity Awareness Month, helping individuals protect themselves online as threats to technology and confidential data become more commonplace. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) lead a collaborative effort between government and industry to raise cybersecurity awareness nationally and internationally.