Proactive Cyber Security Vs Reactive Cyber Security. Which One Are You?

The adequacy of cyber security is essential for every business for the continuity of its operational routine. However, some organizations prioritize this thing during the planning phase of their resources and capital and some do not find it to prefer until they face any such incidence. The first category of organizations is termed under Proactive and the former are Reactive towards their cyber security approach.

The approach of Reactive cyber security itself starts from the end. When an incident or security failure occurs and it affects the security of that organization, people start getting awareness about the cyber security, its significance and the best practices to be followed during the work flow. For example, when people see an unknown person sitting inside the premises and working on his laptop, perhaps he is using the internal network. The aware employees will turn towards him and ask him how does he happen to use the desk inside the premises? After assuring the authenticity of the contact with the help of whom he has enabled himself inside the building, the employee should move away from him.

But the Reactive cyber security by nature has this fundamental flaw in the methodology of not being aware before the incident happens. Therefore, the employees ignore the presence of an unknown inside the premises and at the worst, the activities he’s performing while he is inside the building. This may result in severe security incident. The attackers always try to exploit such known vulnerabilities and take advantage of them. Reactive organizations always keep denying the value of “Cyber Security Awareness” which is again a trait of their working culture.

The proactive organizations prioritize cyber security during the planning phase itself therefore they become efficient enough to identify and eliminate the threat before it comes to an action or even before it establishes any communication with the internal systems, networks or storages.

Since it sounds beneficial over the Reactive methodology which indeed it is, its again a smarter way to carry out day to day business processes efficiently. The attackers are using complex techniques day by day to target organizations and exploit vulnerabilities. The Proactive security approach helps to lay down the foundation of the Organization’s security posture, to take necessary steps to implement them with the help of experts in the security domain. This foundation leads further to use Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning and to automate the security tasks, which again helps the organization to utilize their cream resources for valuable business activities, keeping the monitoring task at minimal level.

If you are an organization looking forward to transform yourself into a Proactive Cyber Secure Organization, then the steps below will work as a helping hand for you in this process of transformation:

1. 1. Risk Assessment: Risk assessment deals with identifying the risk factors those have potential to cause harm, along with risk analysis and risk evaluation. This helps the businesses to assess their ecosystem and prepare a plan to avoid & face all the possible cyber threats.

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1. 1. Identifying critical assets & perform regular security: Assets include sensitive information, business secrets, important documents, etc. Different assets will be important for different users. Therefore, it’s essential to list down all those assets which are critical for the business by working with their users.

Protective measures should be identified. These measures must be efficient enough to reduce the                                     determined risk. Regular assessment approach should correlate between assets, threats, vulnerabilities                           and mitigation.

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1. 1. Continuous cloud monitoring: The technology detects compliance and risk issues associated to the cloud environment. Through continuous monitoring, weak or poorly designed or implemented controls can be corrected or replaced, making the cloud environment free from malicious traffic.

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1. End point protection: It is an approach to provide protection of remotely bridged networks to the client/ employee devices. Laptops, tablets, cellphones, IoTs, other devices, the connection among these devices that establishes network creates path for attackers or security threats.
2. Cyber Security Awareness Training: People play a very crucial part in maintaining the organization secure. They may work as the first line of defense for the security however, on the other hand they may cause threat for the security in terms of unknowingly or deliberate activities. The employees, vendors and stake holders of every organization should undergo Cyber Security Awareness Training Program, in order to understand the nature of threats and also the best practices to avoid and handle such incidents if occur.
3. Implementing disaster recovery plan: This plan majorly includes protecting data assets after a breach or attack. Root cause analysis could prove the correct approach towards response requirement. Taking protective and preventive measures focus on reducing the future possible loss. Management should build a dedicated team who is up to date with new threats and able to modify the plan accordingly.

Integrating Proactive cyber security into your business plan supports the continuity of business process without any obstacle. To face a cyber-incident, managing it, recovering from the losses and get the business back on the track takes a very long time. Therefore, it’s advisable to consult the experts and deploy Cyber Security Architecture along with the Business Continuity Plan.

Irrespective of the nature of business, while dealing with sensitive data and information, every organization should prioritize Cyber Security to be implemented along with the other frameworks to carry out smoother operations. For this you may hire an external vendor, a security partner or may have an in- house security team to monitor and immunize your organization from not only External but the Internal cyber security threats also.