Risky Business: How To Begin Your Cybersecurity Risk Assessment
If you have ever played Risk, you know how challenging it is to grow your empire across the board while not leaving any of your territories—well—at risk. Cybersecurity risk management is similar. As our companies grow, we add people, machines, and devices – as well as risk. With so many devices, end-point connections, IP addresses and people on the network, how do you begin to determine where you might be vulnerable to a cyber-attack? Here are a few ways to identify and detect vulnerabilities and threats, so your network security is not left up to a roll of the dice.
#1: Asset Identification
There are three types of manufacturers: one that has experienced a cyber-attack, one that has been attacked and does not know about it yet and one that will be attacked. After all, manufacturing is the most targeted industry for cyber-attacks. Before determining what products and procedures you need to prevent cyber-attacks, are you aware of all the devices currently on your network?
Asset Identification can help. During the process, field engineers spend a couple of days documenting everything on the network and start to analyze what is current, what needs patching and what is end of life? Lack of documentation is a big vulnerability because you cannot patch and update what you are not aware of. In addition, identifying what hardware is at the end of its lifecycle is important because older equipment is more susceptible to cyber-attacks.
#2: Complete a Comprehensive Network Assessment
Are you aware of the risks associated with a poorly designed or implemented network? Through a network assessment, an expert will analyze the physical and logical architecture of the network and determine where the biggest issues lie and give recommendations for remediation. A properly segmented and layered network is critical for a secure network. By following best practices around network architecture, data breaches and attacks can be contained to a smaller area of the plant.
#3: Oversee a Security Posture Survey
Do you know what your most significant cybersecurity threats are and have you addressed them? Are you vulnerable to third-party applications hosted on your network? Does your company have a disaster recovery plan after a cyber-attack.
A Security Posture Survey will provide detailed information to assess and prioritize your OT networks security risks through asset inventory, a baseline network traffic, and detection of abnormalities. It will also help you evaluate the current state of the network to determine what products and procedures are needed to keep the network secure. For example, threat detection software may be needed to ensure continuous monitoring for abnormalities is taking place. By monitoring for warning signs like excessive login attempts, abnormal traffic or packet information, it can alert someone to further investigate the cause.
#4: Continually Improve and Invest
None of these evaluations are a one-and-done remedy for keeping your network secure. Cybersecurity is an ongoing process that will require annual investment in patching, end-point protection and network modernization. It is also important to consider your company’s goals when planning for cybersecurity. As the company grows, the investment in cybersecurity need to grow with it. What may seem like an unnecessary investment nuisance now will prevent a much larger headache and financial impact in the future.
The good news is you do not have to take on this challenge by yourself. You have a partner equipped to walk you through every step of the process. Contact us with questions about identifying and detecting your cybersecurity risks, and let’s develop a plan to keep your network secure.
