Roger Grimes on Prioritizing Cybersecurity Recommendation

Roger Grimes on Prioritizing Cybersecurity Recommendation

This can be a good point:

A part of the issue is that we’re consistently handed lists…listing of required controls…listing of issues we’re being requested to repair or enhance…lists of latest tasks…lists of threats, and so forth, that aren’t ranked for dangers. For instance, we are sometimes given a cybersecurity guideline (e.g., PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOX, NIST, and many others.) with lots of of suggestions. They’re all nice suggestions, which if adopted, will cut back threat in your atmosphere.

What they don’t let you know is which of the advisable issues may have essentially the most influence on finest lowering threat in your atmosphere. They don’t let you know that one, two or three of this stuff…among the many lots of which were given to you, will cut back extra threat than all of the others.

[…]

The answer?

Right here is one massive one: Don’t use or depend on un-risk-ranked lists. Require any listing of controls, threats, defenses, options to be risk-ranked in keeping with how a lot precise threat they’ll cut back within the present atmosphere if carried out.

[…]

This particular CISA doc has at the least 21 predominant suggestions, lots of which result in two or extra different extra particular suggestions. General, it has a number of dozen suggestions, every of which individually will possible take weeks to months to satisfy in any atmosphere if not already completed. Any particular person following this doc is…rightly…going to be anticipated to judge and implement all these suggestions. And doing so will completely cut back threat.

The catch is: There are two suggestions that WILL DO MORE THAN ALL THE REST ADDED TOGETHER TO REDUCE CYBERSECURITY RISK most effectively: patching and utilizing multifactor authentication (MFA). Patching is listed third. MFA is listed eighth. And there may be nothing to point their capacity to considerably cut back cybersecurity threat as in comparison with the opposite suggestions. Two of this stuff aren’t like the opposite, however how is anybody studying the doc purported to know that patching and utilizing MFA actually matter greater than all the remainder?

Posted on October 31, 2024 at 11:43 AM •
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