Hello, and welcome back to this next TomCast from GuardSight; we are a tactical cybersecurity-as-a-service organization dedicated to helping businesses protect their data, their assets, and their endpoints.

Today we are going to discuss cybersecurity maturity. What does that mean, precisely? Well, take out the cybersecurity term and think about maturity. What does that term indicate to you in different aspects of life? Typically, maturity indicates some sort of knowledge and experience gained in a specific area, and could also include growth. We all know about physical maturity, and that is not what I am talking about here (although some of that can apply).

Think now about your cybersecurity program within your organization. Is it fairly new? Has your organization just started a cyber department, and have they recently onboarded cyber-specific talent? Or are you an organization that has quite a few years of experience growing your cybersecurity program, implementing various frameworks to ensure a much more robust cybersecurity posture?

Cybersecurity maturity covers that massive umbrella term of cybersecurity, so you could have a very mature cybersecurity policy while having a very immature cyber defense. You could have excellent strategy while having poor tactical movement. There are so many different aspects of cybersecurity to consider that having a complete mature cyber program is not as common as one may think.

The speed of technology doesn’t help a program mature either. In fact, that speed can do the opposite and render mature aspects of the program obsolete, thereby making it overall rather immature. This back and forth can really become overwhelming if one tries to look at the entire picture all at once versus viewing pieces of the overall puzzle one bit at a time.

Also, think about the overall mission of the organization. What are the business objectives? Remember risk assessments and business impact analyses? These provide visibility to the business objectives, so your cybersecurity program needs to be constructed in a way that the organization can achieve the objectives in the most secure way possible while not adversely impacting the means to do so.

The better and longer your organization is able to do that, the more mature your program is. Do the business objectives require a seasoned and robust offensive security team built to perform penetration assessments? If so, grow and mature that aspect of the organization. If not, don’t allocate funds and time to areas that will not help the organization achieve the business objective.

Some aspects of cybersecurity are rather standard across the board for many organizations out there. Like we discussed in the last TomCast, having a SIEM solution benefits almost any organization, and having one that is optimally and efficiently configured shows maturity in that aspect of the cybersecurity program. Now, if the organization has an optimally configured SIEM but the cybersecurity analysts on the team have experienced turnover and are no longer able to analyze and react to the SIEM alerts, your program maturity has taken a few steps backwards.

Some organizations are still in the learning phase of how important cybersecurity is within the development of the overall business objectives. Some organizations, like GuardSight for example, have very mature cybersecurity programs because protecting data, assets, and endpoints are included in the business objectives of the organization. One point of this TomCast is key in determining the cybersecurity maturity of an organization. Collaboration must occur between department heads, stakeholders, senior leaders, and executives. Transparency about the business objectives and organizational core values needs to be present so all decision makers are on the same page.

There are commonalities to cybersecurity programs and there are stark differences to cybersecurity programs. If the program pieces help the business grow and thrive, those are areas that need to be focused on and developed/matured. If the program pieces detract from the business growth and impede progress, think about whether or not those areas are truly needed/required moving forward.

We here at GuardSight thank you for taking the time to listen to this TomCast. For more information on various cybersecurity tips head on over to our website and check out more TomCasts. Those are located over on www.guardsight.com/tomcast. Or, if you would like more information on what GuardSight can do for you, head on over to www.guardsight.com and contact us. There are several free cybersecurity tools out there that can help you improve your overall security posture. We’d love to hear from you! Thanks!