Democratizing Cybersecurity: A Blueprint For Resilience
Strengthening cyber resiliency through democratized security practices for holistic protection.
In the face of growing cyber threats, Anant Adya, EVP at Infosys, advocates democratizing cybersecurity to empower all employees and ensure comprehensive protection.
The Growing Cyber Threat Landscape
The cyber threat is growing. Companies need more than robust defenses to meet this; they must also democratize cybersecurity. That means empowering everyone in the organization to take responsibility for security.
Creating cyber-resiliency across business practices is critical in today’s landscape. But how can companies achieve true cybersecurity democratization and integration? There are several keys to achieving this objective, which include preemptively working to build up defenses, inserting security into all conversations, defining clear policies and processes, and engaging in training and teaching for all.
While so much across the business landscape is changing, the one constant is the cyber threat. Whether it’s phishing, spam emails, malware, or data breaches, all pose an enormous and costly threat to companies. And the tactics are becoming more sophisticated. A lethal mix of artificial intelligence and voice replication is creating a new universe of threats, as shown in chilling detail during a 60-minute segment in May.
In the United States, there were more than $10 billion in cybercrime losses last year – a 49 percent increase over the year before, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Replicate those numbers globally, and there’s a major drag on the global economy. By 2025, cyberattacks are projected to incur costs of $10.5 trillion globally. Surveys of board members show near unanimity that cybersecurity events are business risks for the entire organization.
Challenges of Modern Work Patterns
New work patterns are intensifying the threats. Employees are increasingly accessing data from home offices and mobile devices – and both frequently lack robust security protocols. Companies are also collecting more and more data, which is being shared internally and externally, with storage often in the cloud.
Rigorous cybersecurity protocols are fundamental, of course. This includes solutions focused on behavioral analytics, which help surveillance activity patterns and can pinpoint suspicious behavior – whether by employees or outside actors. Accessing company-wide data from a single location and then analyzing it in real-time is also critically important.
There are also emerging opportunities to supplement a risk-based approach to automation with machine learning, advanced analytics, and other tools – all in service of identifying questionable activity before it becomes a full-scale security breach.
However, it’s commonplace for employees to believe that cybersecurity is the exclusive province of the cybersecurity team. “They’re the experts,” goes the conventional thinking, “and they know much more than I do. When I need to know what to do, and not do, they will tell me.”
It’s not just employees who think this way – sometimes the cybersecurity team does as well. “We know best,” goes this thinking, “and interference from others threatens our ability to do our job.”
But this approach which is both passive and siloed – is likely to be ineffective, leaving companies vulnerable to attacks, data breaches, and worse. Companies should be focused on developing a democratized and integrated cybersecurity infrastructure.
See More: Efficiency Amidst Uncertainty: Impactful Work Management
Embedding a Security-first Culture
A fundamental principle should underpin every company’s approach to cybersecurity: all employees and stakeholders need to be engaged in continually building, maintaining, and refining a security-first culture. When this idea is woven into a company’s DNA, its defenses will become increasingly more robust, and its vulnerabilities will be addressed earlier.
This is as much a change management organizational issue as it is a technical one. Several steps are needed to ensure that the security-first approach gets implemented company-wide.
It’s critically important for a company’s leadership to throw its weight behind this initiative. That means senior executives – including the CEO – as well as the board of directors. Messaging should be consistent and ongoing, emphasizing why security is in the interest of everyone throughout the organization.
That messaging should be reinforced with written and video materials that explain precisely what the security-first approach means and how it can be adopted and maintained.
Equally important is developing a training plan that will foster understanding and facilitate adoption, giving employees and stakeholders the skills and knowledge they need.
Finally, companies need to be able to measure the effectiveness of the program they adopt. That means creating metrics around everything from employee engagement to the number of security incidents. This task should be given to a senior manager to ensure it gets the attention and follow-through it deserves.
See More: How to Implement a Cybersecurity-First Culture
Future Focus: Empowering Against Cyber Threats
I am well aware of the many challenges associated with this undertaking. Companies with unsophisticated cybersecurity practices will simply replicate those practices throughout the organization. That’s just building mediocrity on top of mediocrity.
Large companies may also want to keep the cybersecurity functions siloed, fearing the potential risks in empowering all employees. Another potential challenge is that some entities within companies may want to avoid the added security responsibilities, seeing them as more work without any immediate benefits. Cybersecurity teams could see the entire effort as devaluing their work since their special skills will be distributed throughout the organization.
I also understand that the information technology and information security teams are always faced with both keeping the systems functioning while also staying current on digital trends to ensure the company remains competitive. That can lead to cost-cutting on the cybersecurity front, with the inevitable result that defenses don’t remain current to meet the emerging threat and vulnerabilities arise.
Those are real challenges, but they can be overcome through enlightened leadership by executives across the organization. That leadership needs to convey to everyone in the organization the enormity of the cyber threat. A company’s profits, reputation, and existence can be at stake. Getting everyone to understand that and act accordingly will only grow in importance in the years ahead.
How can democratizing cybersecurity bolster your organization’s defenses against evolving cyber threats? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
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