Is Your Cyber Security Keeping Pace With Your Business?

Cyber security has changed massively, but the way many organisations manage it hasn’t.

Annual penetration tests, compliance audits and periodic security reviews remain important, but they only provide a picture of an organisation’s security at a particular moment. The problem is that businesses rarely stand still long enough for that picture to remain accurate.

New applications are introduced, software is updated, employees come and go, cloud environments change and new vulnerabilities emerge. A business that was secure when it completed an assessment several months ago may have a very different risk profile today.

In her latest article for International Security Journal, Kirsty Fowler, Managing Director of WorkNest Secure, has explored why organisations need to start thinking beyond point-in-time security and towards continuous cyber resilience.

Compliance doesn’t always mean resilience

One of the biggest challenges Kirsty highlights is the gap between being compliant and being genuinely resilient. Achieving Cyber Essentials, passing an audit or completing an annual penetration test can provide valuable assurance, but none should be treated as the finish line.

A business might successfully complete an assessment and then have a new vulnerability appear days or weeks later, or even earlier. If nobody is looking for those changes until the next scheduled test, that vulnerability could remain unnoticed for months.

Cyber criminals certainly aren’t working to annual assessment cycles, so security teams can’t afford to either.

Getting greater visibility of risk

This doesn’t mean abandoning point-in-time testing. Penetration testing remains an important part of understanding how vulnerabilities could be exploited by an attacker.

Instead, organisations should consider how continuous visibility can complement expert-led testing.

Regular and continuous vulnerability scanning can help identify weaknesses as environments change, giving teams an opportunity to act sooner rather than discovering months of accumulated issues during the next assessment.

But visibility alone isn’t enough.

With security teams already dealing with huge volumes of information, another dashboard filled with vulnerabilities can simply create more noise. Organisations need to understand which findings matter, who is responsible for fixing them and how quickly action needs to be taken.

That means making vulnerability management part of everyday operations, with clear ownership, prioritisation and remediation processes.

Building resilience into everyday business

This shift is particularly important for SMEs. Smaller organisations face many of the same cyber threats as large enterprises but rarely have equivalent security teams or budgets.

Continuous cyber resilience isn’t about trying to eliminate every possible risk or investing in endless technology. It is about knowing where your organisation is exposed, understanding what matters most and continually improving your ability to respond.

As Kirsty explains, the most resilient organisations aren’t necessarily those spending the most on cyber security. They are the ones treating security as an ongoing business discipline rather than an annual exercise.

With customers, insurers and boards asking increasingly difficult questions about cyber resilience, being able to demonstrate what happened during the last assessment is no longer enough.

The more important question is: do you know where your risks are today?

You can read Kirsty Fowler’s full article, “From Point-in-Time Security to Continuous Cyber Resilience,” published by International Security Journal, here: https://internationalsecurityjournal.com/security-cyber-worknest-secure/  

Explore WorkNest Secure’s cybersecurity services and find out how we can help you strengthen your security and stay ahead of emerging risks.