10 Things You Need to Know About Cybersecurity Consulting Services
Reading Time: 6 minutesAbout hiring cybersecurity consulting services to protect your business systems and databases? Learn the most important things you should look for.
Cybersecurity consulting boosts the network security of organizations and enterprises. That is why this industry is expected to reach $28.22 billion in market value by 2023. Cybersecurity consulting services consist of a team of experts that use advanced techniques to identify problems, evaluate security issues, and assess risks that can damage a company's data networks.
It also implements cybersecurity solutions while guiding to improve an organization's security posture. As a result, the company's intellectual property is secure from data breaches, viruses, malware, and malicious attacks.
If you want to design and execute high-quality security policies, procedures, and technologies based on your company's cybersecurity needs, you should also hire a cybersecurity consulting service. However, make sure it has specific attributes to show its competency.
Read this blog to learn about those attributes. We will discuss detailed tips on choosing the best cybersecurity consulting service.
An Intrusion Detection System (IDS)
An intrusion detection system (IDS) is a monitoring system that scans network traffic to detect suspicious activity. The moment a threat is found, it raises the alarm by generating alerts. These alerts activate a security operations center (SOC) analyst or an incident responder to take appropriate preventive measures.
A good security consulting service offers these five types of intrusion detection systems:
- Signature-Based Detection (SIDS): It identifies patterns and compares them with the signs of a data breach. That is why it is dependable on a database of intrusion and security breaches.
- Anomaly-Based Detection (AIDS): This IDS system detects zero-day attacks and intrusions by matching the signature of an attack from your database of malicious activity. Therefore, it requires an updated database to match and detect attacks to provide timely notifications.
- Network-Based Intrusion (NIDS): The entire network is monitored through one or more endpoints in this solution. It checks all the data packets that travel through your system to detect intruders.
- Host-Based Intrusion Detection (HIDS): This system takes snapshots of the device it is installed in. It compares the shots with previous records to discover anomalies.
Cloud Security Expertise
Cloud security or cloud computing security is a combination of multiple cybersecurity measures that aim to protect cloud-based infrastructures from viruses and malware. If your database, applications, and software are connected to a cloud server, you must choose cybersecurity consulting services that offer this expertise.
Cloud security expertise revolves around understanding cloud architecture and the security that follows it. The service provider should also be well-informed about the latest cloud-based threats to stop them in their tracks. This includes experience with advanced cloud security tools, such as encryption, two-factor authentication, vulnerability management, and data loss prevention.
Cloud compliance is another thing you should focus on when locating cybersecurity consulting. Cloud compliance is using the rules and regulations enforced by national, local, and international governing authorities while providing cloud security services. Not abiding by the rules of cloud compliance will result in legal charges, fines, and penalties.
Security Analysis
Security analysis evaluates system data to implement adequate security measures. It also analyzes multiple security events to predict and detect threats. It then deploys preventive tools to eliminate an attack before it can make a damaging impact on your company's infrastructure.
Cybersecurity services perform security analysis through these steps:
- Identification of Assets: Take inventory of your digital assets to learn about current and potential vulnerabilities
- Security Controls Evaluation: Checking the efficiency of your current security controls to create a complete protection plan
- Penetration Testing: Using a testing technique to launch real-world attacks that identify vulnerabilities that a cybercriminal can exploit
- Ongoing Monitoring: Continuously monitoring your network and database to detect malicious activity instantly
- Continual Improvement: Regularly upgrading the security analysis and security techniques to fight off new and advanced cyberattacks
Data Security Breaches Management
Data security breaches entail that all the sensitive information stored in your system is leaked into an unsecured environment for everybody to see and use for financial gains. This data breach occurs when cybercriminals steal your employee's login credentials and use them to access your network.
The security service you obtain should be able to protect you from all types of data breaches, which are:
- XSS Attack: Also known as cross-site scripting, it is a web security attack in which malicious code is injected into a trusted, legitimate website. When you visit an infected website, the malicious code scripts itself on your browser and sends all the stored information to the hacker.
- SQL Injection Attack: This attack uses infected malicious SQL code to manipulate the backend database and acquire confidential information, such as bank details, passwords, and personal user information.
- MITM Attack: Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack allows hackers to insert themselves into a conversation between two parties. The hacker either eavesdrops or impersonates the trusted party to gain information.
- Ransomware Attacks: This type of malware is used by cybercriminals to infect a system and decrypt all the data stored within it. You can only access your intellectual property by paying the ransom amount.
- Data Exfiltration: In this attack, the unauthorized user transfers your data to their device.
If your company becomes a victim of any data breach, it can ruin your reputation. Research shows that 46% of organizations that endured cyberattacks failed to rebuild customer trust and loyalty.
Moreover, data breaches also lead to legal consequences as governing authorities examine the reasons behind the attacks. The business would be deemed guilty and penalized accordingly if it did not have proper security measures.
While cybercriminals target all types of businesses, the following industries are the most risk:
- Healthcare
- Finance
- Retail
- Gaming
- Government departments
- E-commerce stores
Crisis Management
Crisis management is a set of application strategies designed and applied in an organization's systems, networks, and applications to manage and contain an unexpected adverse event (crisis). A crisis is a potential risk that can damage your business immensely. The extent of the damage depends on the nature of the crisis.
Therefore, you need an incident response team that creates and applies an incident response plan in your network. As a result, whenever your company faces a crisis, this plan will be deployed in your business operations to contain all possible incidents which can potentially harm your production and revenue. You can also utilize a crisis containment plan to diffuse a damaging event and stop its escalation in your system.
Conduct Audits and Backups
A cybersecurity audit is responsible for reviewing your company's IT infrastructure and ensuring that all the critical policies and procedures are being implemented. Due to this practice, you can identify any vulnerability that can lead to a data breach.
The backup audit is essential. It focuses on accurately recording the process and frequency of data backup, data protection, and data recovery. You use this technique to make sure you are creating data backups regularly. It also helps you check the performance of your processes and storage resources.
Cybersecurity consulting services follow relevant controls and policies when creating a backup audit. These regulations ensure that the stored data is encrypted, so it can't be used against you. Moreover, these companies develop multiple copies, so you can still access the information even if one copy is damaged or destroyed due to natural causes.
Disaster Recovery Plan
A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) or IT disaster recovery plan is a set of documented and structured policies. It describes how your organization will respond to quickly resume operations after an unplanned adverse event. This plan is often combined with Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to evaluate the consequences of a sudden incident.
The job of BIA is to predict the consequences that occur due to the disruption of business operations. It also gathers information that aids in creating recovery processes and strategies. As cybercrimes are now more sophisticated, you need an updated DRP and BIA to mitigate these threats instantly. These plans will also help you reduce downtime and minimize financial and reputational damages.
Analyzation of The Current Security Setup
The cybersecurity consulting you choose to employ should regularly analyze the security setup. A security setup is a list of security measures currently implemented on your system and devices to reduce vulnerabilities.
During the security setup analysis, the consulting service should:
- Identify the current security controls to ensure they are up to date for detecting new threats and cyberattacks.
- Conduct network mapping to discover all the entities linked to your network by providing a visual sketch of all virtual and physical networks in your IT infrastructure.
- Perform regular security policy reviews to remove outdated cybersecurity policies that can put your databases at risk of malicious activity.
- Execute vulnerability assessment to define, identify, and classify all the vulnerabilities present in your system.
- Use automated tools to review logs and identify all malicious attacks on your system.
Implementation Skills
Implementation skills involve studying the architecture and infrastructure of systems and networks to obtain necessary information. This information is later used for identifying current security controls and their usage. When hiring a cybersecurity consulting service, ensure it has the characteristics mentioned below to implement security skills successfully.
- Technical expertise
- Understanding of network architecture
- Knowledge of security protocols and standards
- Experience with security tools and technologies
- Cybersecurity communication to create a relationship between the security team and the rest of the organization
Educate Your Team On Cybersecurity
Your workers will need to understand the critical concepts of cybersecurity and its implementation to increase protection against viruses and malware. Therefore, a cybersecurity consulting service identifies the knowledge gap and creates training and education programs.
When employees receive this training, they can understand the importance of cybersecurity and ways to identify, report, and respond to potential threats and security incidents. Your cybersecurity team can also conduct role-based training to address each employee's role and responsibilities in using counter-security measures.
Once the training is done, your employees will be provided with certification to show that they understand and respond to threats correctly.
Wrapping Up
Cybersecurity should be your main priority to protect your company from increasing cyberattacks. That is why you should acquire cybersecurity consulting services for your organization and secure your systems against all malicious activities. When selecting a cybersecurity consulting professional, ensure they are well-versed in intrusion detection and security analysis.
The firm should also have cloud security expertise to prevent and mitigate data security breaches. If your network is compromised, the consulting service should be able to instantaneously perform crisis management and launch a disaster recovery plan. Therefore, choosing a service boosts your organization's security.
This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.
© 2023 Hijab Sheikh
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