With many businesses around the world facing difficult financial decisions, it’s likely that cost savings will need to be made somehow, including in cybersecurity. However, this is happening at a time when cybersecurity threats are increasing. One way to balance the growing risk with a shrinking budget is to focus on threat monitoring because, according to a 2020 Ponemon study, “organisations that leverage threat intelligence are 2.5 times more likely to have an effective cybersecurity posture.”
Here are four ways you can optimise your current threat monitoring strategy to ensure you’re getting the most value.
1. Work out what you actually need
Depending on the type and size of your business, you might not necessarily need every cybersecurity tool available. On the other hand, there will be things that are essential to implement, regardless of the size of your business, such as enhanced data protection. To make sure you’re investing in the best solutions for your business, it helps to conduct regular vulnerability assessments to help identify weak points in your system so that you can proactively address them.
2. Take advantage of new technology
As cybercriminals are increasingly turning to AI to help them create better, more scalable scams, businesses should also be looking to see how they can leverage it to protect themselves. Using AI, machine learning and automation capabilities can help you to focus efforts on areas of high-risk impacts which will improve efficiency in the long run.
3. Create a team security culture
Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting individuals who likely have access to large sets of valuable cloud data, rather than looking for vulnerabilities in infrastructure. As a result, each employee can play a role in threat monitoring. Investment in staff training can therefore go a long way in protecting your business, as it increases the number of people actively looking out for threats.
4. Take a zero trust approach
In addition to training staff around active threat monitoring, it’s also important to teach everyone in the business to take a zero trust approach. This means that no person or device should automatically be trusted as safe. Instead all users should be authenticated, authorised, and continuously validated for security configuration before being granted or keeping access to applications and data.
These are just four ways that you can consider improving threat monitoring with minimal impact on your finances, but there are plenty of other ways to improve your cybersecurity operations on a smaller budget.