Businesses are embracing digital transformation to drive agility and ensure their success in a digital-first economy. This includes adapting to digital technologies like the cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) as part of their transformation strategies.
But as these abilities open companies to more interactions and business growth, they also force them to address risk challenges that are continually multiplying. These vulnerabilities came into light during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when businesses were forced to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives and increase reliance on third-party vendors. This led to sharing important data beyond the regular network, thus increasing financial, reputational, and regulatory risks.
A study by Reed Smith reveals that online scams have increased by over 400% since the start of the pandemic. Other research by Fintech News showed that 80% of firms experienced an increase in cyberattacks, while 43% of the data breaches originated from cloud-based web applications.
These breaches have highlighted the importance of cybersecurity as an integral component of an organization’s digital transformation strategy. But with the emerging new technologies, CISOs need a starting point for adapting the cybersecurity program to support the newly transformed business.
This is where digital transformation frameworks can help create a foundation for robust digital security programs that enable you to keep up with the rapid changes faced while transforming the business.
The Importance Of Gold-Standard Frameworks To Guide Cybersecurity Programs
A cybersecurity framework is a set of guidelines and best practices for a highly-functional cybersecurity program, helping organizations manage the risks of going digital.
They are strongly recommended for organizations that have to comply with industry, national, and international cybersecurity regulations as they are often the foundation for regulatory compliance and can reduce duplicated efforts when implemented properly.
Leveraging existing, gold-standard cybersecurity frameworks to support a digital transformation framework allows companies to monitor where they can improve the existing digital processes or identify potential areas for implementing new technical and business strategies.
By deploying a framework that prioritizes a flexible and cost-effective approach to preventing attacks on your data, you can improve the resilience of your business. Moreover, it enables you to promptly respond to cybersecurity risks and analyze the root cause of breaches. That’s the key to crafting effective measures that reduce these risks.
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework offers a more flexible approach. It provides a strong foundation for supporting your organization’s growth in the long term while ensuring ultimate security. Because the CSF is outcomes-based, it enables cross-functional collaboration with technical and business leaders to enhance security as the business transforms.
Future of Cyber Risk Programs
As more enterprises adopt leading-edge technologies to increase their digital transformation efforts, they are open to more significant security attacks.
This highlights the importance of a digital transformation framework that augments your digital transformation strategy. But before that, you need to understand how the framework supports the future of cybersecurity solutions.
Automation And Growing Intelligence of Cybersecurity Solutions
Automation and artificial intelligence-powered cybersecurity solutions play a crucial role in helping businesses avert increasingly complicated security threats.
In fact, automation is a precursor to machine learning systems that detect attacks or monitor the indicators of complex attacks that are not easily identifiable.
More Data-Driven Approaches
Data sets play a critical part in providing data and validating the data-driven systems that include machine learning and AI algorithms.
Such data-driven approaches will make it easier to deploy security automation as it provides comprehensive information on your cybersecurity programs and the attacks against them.
Standards-Based Solutions
By deploying standard-based solutions, you can increase your cybersecurity program’s resilience. You can build on traditional and emerging standards to create a unique structure for your CPS systems that ensures your network security at all times.
Integration Of Cyber And Physical Security
There is a close link between cyber and physical systems and their security mechanisms regarding IoT and CPS systems.
Such a close connection between them has paved the way for the integration of physical and cybersecurity measures. This proves to be helpful for all the industry sectors that employ both cyber and physical security infrastructures.
Rise Of Vulnerability Databases
The vulnerability databases are used to monitor and distribute information on potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities. NIST is one of the most effective cybersecurity frameworks. This and other similar databases collect the data necessary for security automation and intelligence for your organization.
They give users access to updated information on cyberattacks or data breaches, making it easier to build a security strategy that works.
Conclusion
The majority of the companies are now embarking on a digital transformation journey after recognizing its importance. But to maximize these efforts, you need to develop a strategic approach towards ensuring cybersecurity for your organization.
A cybersecurity framework like NIST can help you adhere to best practices and compliance requirements for enhanced network, IoT, and cloud security. At the core of the framework, NIST follows the basic pattern of identifying, protecting, detecting, responding, and recovering.
It offers a well-managed structure for identifying the cybersecurity risks and your organization’s assets that need protection. Moreover, it also enlists all the methods you can implement to protect your organization’s assets and detect the potential risks and threats in the wake of a security incident.
So, instead of deploying checkbox compliance to your enterprise’s cybersecurity, take a risk-based approach that allows you to customize the cybersecurity program for maximum effectiveness.
