5 Steps to Assess Your Cybersecurity Operations

Article Oct 23, 2023 Read time: 3 min

By Dilson Mesquita, Vice President of SOC Security & Consult Integration Services at Kyndryl and William DeForest, Director of Security Operations and Global Offerings at Kyndryl

Many organizations updated their cybersecurity measures in recent years, thanks to a global pandemic, a shift to remote and hybrid work, and a general rise in cyberattacks.

So as the threat surface expands — and new tools and more integrated operating models are added to help manage these challenges — it’s important for Security Operations Centers (SOC) and security managers to revisit their organization’s cybersecurity strategies regularly.

The reason: Many organizations now have too many technology systems and are weighed down by their increasing complexity, encumbered with an excess of tools — sometimes not fully utilized — and processes designed to manage various cybersecurity incidents.

But reassessing cybersecurity and resiliency processes and toolkits to optimize spending and reduce “bloat” without degrading current security posture can be challenging. Having a strong cybersecurity operations program in place requires an exhaustive, organization-specific review to identify ways to improve organizational cybersecurity and areas that can be optimized.

Here are five steps to reevaluate your cybersecurity operations:

1. Know the needs of your business

Understanding your organization’s risk appetite and risk tolerance is critical. Knowing this will help align security leaders with the business teams to identify areas that are most important to protect, create a better understanding of the organization’s goals, align security budgets to effectively meet those goals and be able to withstand an attack.

2. Define your SOC metrics

Understanding the metrics of an organization’s SOC measures will help teams benchmark how well their cybersecurity operations are running and what tools and processes will enable them to achieve those goals, while ensuring it fits within the parameters of the business. Additionally, metrics are key to measuring the effectiveness of the SOC, enabling decision making through current and future performance, and continuously improving.

3. Understand your current toolsets

Taking inventory of the security tools in place and deeply understanding their capabilities can help uncover redundancies. The process may also identify opportunities to apply current tools to other areas. Further, regularly reassessing the SOC toolkit will help the business keep pace with the expanding cyber threat landscape as security tools evolve.

4. Be sure to analyze and optimize

With a better understanding of the organization, metrics, tools and processes, it’s important to conduct a strong analysis to carefully consolidate systems without degrading the overall security posture of the organization.

5. Continuously adapt

Having a strong cybersecurity program in place is not static — a decision can’t be made one year and then left untouched for the foreseeable future. It’s important for business leaders to have a continuous modernization mindset in place to adapt to the current needs of the business while enabling security teams to reassess prior decisions. That will help the organization to stay secure and resilient from future threats.

Organizations today are inherently prone to change from external factors, such as shifting business needs and evolving cyberthreats. A strong cybersecurity program that’s aligned with the business’ short- and long-term objectives requires the team to have the freedom to adapt as needed to ensure the organization remains secure.

In recognition of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, this is the fourth installment of a weekly series in October that highlights how organizations can anticipate, protect against, withstand and recover from cyberattacks.

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