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5 Components Your Cybersecurity Strategy Must Have in 2022

The past two years have been eventful, to say the least—and 2022 is shaping up to be just as significant. Given that we’re still in the early stages of the year, now is as good a time as any to revisit and revamp your security strategy. Here’s a bit of advice in that regard. 

A Remote Work Policy

With the pandemic, the world was forced to embrace a rapid transition to a world of distributed work. Even once COVID-19 finally becomes endemic, there’s no going back to the way things were before. As noted by the Remote Work & Compensation Pulse Survey, 48% of people want to stay fully remote, and 44% prefer hybrid work.

It’s also worth noting that 63% of high revenue growth companies embrace a hybrid working model—meaning it’s in your best interests to support it. 

Of course, remote work isn’t without its risks. A home network will never be as secure as a corporate network, and an employee working from home is even more likely to be careless when it comes to protecting critical assets. It’s important that you integrate a remote work policy into your security strategy that establishes: 

  • Required hardware. 
  • Required software.
  • Best practices.
  • Acceptable use. 
  • Authentication process. 
  • Rights and responsibilities. 

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC)

GRC isn’t just for businesses in regulated sectors anymore. Modern businesses operate in a landscape brimming with digital threats. To survive such an environment, effective risk management, asset management, and security controls are a must. A GRC program exists to help your business implement these components.

More importantly, it allows you to do so in a way that keeps your technology aligned with your business objectives. 

An Incident Response Plan

There was a time when a business could reasonably expect that, if it made all the necessary preparations and took all the necessary precautions, there was little risk of experiencing a cyber incident. That time, however, is long past. Today, it’s not a question of if you’ll face a cyberattack, data breach, or disruptive event. 

It’s a question of when. 

With that in mind, you need to lay the necessary groundwork for business continuity and disaster recovery. That’s where your incident response plan comes in. It helps ensure that when the worst does happen, you aren’t caught unprepared, establishing the following: 

  • Your critical assets.
  • The risks facing those assets.
  • Roles and responsibilities.   
  • A plan for each specific type of incident.
  • A list of key stakeholders. 
  • Communication templates.

Organization-Wide Accountability

Cybersecurity is no longer the sole domain of the IT department. In a post-COVID world, protecting your business’s systems and assets will be everyone’s responsibility. Create a culture of cybersecurity from the top down, ensuring everyone understands their role—and their importance. 

More importantly, give everyone ownership over their own workflows, ensuring everyone has the tools they need to securely do their jobs. 

Vendor Risk Management

Your security perimeter no longer ends at the firewall. Your vendors, business partners, and supply chain partners can just as easily put your organization at risk as any other threat. As such, it’s not enough to simply implement an internal risk management plan.

You also need a means of managing third-party risk. 

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