In a study of The Relationship Between Security Maturity and Business Enablement, ATT Cybersecurity and analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) identified key trends of organizations with emerging, growing, and mature cybersecurity programs. They note in emerging programs, organizations perceived the security team’s role as an inconvenience and roadblock. In stark contrast, organizations with more mature security programs perceived cybersecurity as an enabler of business.
Understanding where your company is on its journey toward a mature cybersecurity program can help you identify the right next steps to fuel business opportunities as you grow.
Why immature programs won’t fuel growth for your company.
Emerging cybersecurity programs typically lack “security by design” principles in their networks, putting them at a disadvantage. With no security controls baked in from the outset, security objectives are harder to achieve. Time efficiencies suffer, too. Pieced-together technology stacks take more time to manage and coordinate, and manually handled compliance-documentation processes (still using spreadsheets?) slow everyone down.
In addition, many organizations with immature programs have neglected to think about budget for outsourcing professional help. Without expert consultation or assistance to develop a security program aligned you’re your company’s business goals, the process crawls along. This poor progress means little ROI to show for your efforts and can actually delay your leadership from approving the very budget necessary to take your cybersecurity program to the next level.
The flip side: why having a mature security program is correlated with revenue growth.
The security study found positive takeaways as well. Most notably, organizations with mature cybersecurity programs were 2.3X more likely than those with less mature programs to see a direct correlation between business-enabling IT initiatives and their cybersecurity efforts. Moreover, 57% of organizations with leading security programs said they exceeded their revenue goals by 7%.
In other words, having a mature security program doesn’t just remove barriers, it fuels growth. It allows you to undertake IT projects that will open your organization to expanded lines of business and revenue generation.
Mature security programs open doors for new business. More and more leading companies and investors are requesting security and compliance validations from new vendors and partners. If you are not yet getting validations such as risk assessments, certifications like SOC 2-Type 2, and penetration testing from certified security testers, you will not have documentation to provide the necessary assurances.
Today’s buyers and investors are more mature, recognizing that risks like a third-party supply chain attack can be costly to profitability and your brand — and can create legal fallout and potential fines due to noncompliance. They want assurances up-front.
Providing evidence of a more mature cybersecurity program can be a key differentiator when your prospective clients are deciding between two different providers, especially in regulated spaces like healthcare, finance, education, energy, and government contracting.
Cybersecurity steps taken today can determine whether you win tomorrow’s contract.
At TRUE, we regularly handle security questionnaires and validation projects on behalf of clients, acting in either a virtual CISO or audit-preparation capacity, to help our clients’ prospects and partners understand the security controls in place. This gives more mature organizations looking to buy from or partner with you the peace of mind they need regarding risk mitigation and legal documentation to meet their own risk thresholds.
Not there yet? How to make a difference now as you get up to speed.
Simply working to improve your security program year-over-year puts you at risk of a major security incident in the meantime. While there’s no silver bullet for instantly achieving a mature program, you can give yourself immediate relief and greater peace of mind while you grow with these tips.
- Implement Network and Endpoint Monitoring
- Implementing network and endpoint monitoring and response solutions provides margin for your organization to experience instant improvements to your security posture while building out your overall program. Incorporating these solutions in a coordinated way that maximizes telemetry will boost the success of your monitoring and remediation.
- Provide Protection Documentation to Clients
- Providing prospective partners and clients with documentation that you are protected by 24/7/365 SOC services shows risk mitigation that can meet their internal security objectives, including financial risk reduction associated with cyber insurance policy requirements. New business opportunities can help support your security budget.
- Implement MDR and SIEM
- Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) provide advanced threat hunting, identification and remediation of threats that make their way into your environment while you are growing. However, a typical SIEM solution and internal SOC requires 12-13 full-time employees to achieve around-the-clock coverage. You can greatly reduce your cost by utilizing an experienced partner for monitoring and responding to security events in your environment 24/7/365. This outsourcing also removes the burden of purchasing expensive tools.
We’re here to help.
TRUE’s US-based Security Operations Center (SOC) with around-the-clock monitoring and response capabilities, delivered by Incident Response experts and certified security analysts, enables us to provide superior intervention on our clients’ behalf through TrueMDR and TrueSIEM.
Whether your organization already has a solution but needs someone to watch your environment at night and on weekends, or you need us to do it for you, feel free to request a consultation with one of our experts. We have a flexible solution to meet your needs. We’re happy to help.
Contact us today!