What is Security Posture?

Key Components of Security Posture

A corporate security posture is composed of various components and factors, including:

• IT Asset Inventory: A security team can’t effectively defend IT assets that it doesn’t know exists. A comprehensive asset inventory is essential to a strong security posture.
• Attack Surface Visibility: An organization’s digital attack surface is composed of the various systems and vulnerabilities that an attacker can exploit to target an organization. Visibility into an organization’s attack surface is essential to deploying security controls to protect it.
• Risk Assessment: Organizations rarely have the resources required to completely eliminate cyber threats to the business. Risk assessments determine the risk posed by a particular threat, enabling organizations to prioritize security actions.
• Security Controls: Security controls protect the organization against various threats. A mature security posture includes having security controls in place to protect against the greatest threats to the business.
• Incident Response: If an organization can’t prevent an attack from occurring, it needs to respond quickly and effectively to remediate it. An existing incident response team plan helps to expedite and enhance incident response activities.
• Compliance and Governance: Security programs don’t exist in a vacuum – they are a part of the business as a whole. A mature security program has strong governance and complies with internal policies and external regulations.
• Employee Training and Awareness: Employees are an organization’s first line of defense against cyber threats. Training employees to recognize and respond properly to phishing and other threats reduces the organization’s cybersecurity risk exposure.
• Security Automation: Manual security management processes are slow and unscalable. Security automation enhances a corporate security posture by enabling it to more quickly detect, remediate, and recover from cyber threats.

How to Strengthen Your Security Posture

An organization can take various steps to enhance its security posture, including:

• Automated Inventory Management: Perform automated inventories of corporate IT assets to provide real-time visibility into the systems under the organization’s care.
• Regular Vulnerability Assessments: Automate vulnerability scanning and perform regular penetration tests to detect potential vulnerabilities and risks to an organization’s systems.
• Risk Analysis: Perform regular risk assessments to ensure that cybersecurity investments and actions are properly prioritized.
• Define Clear Metrics: Define clear, measurable metrics to evaluate the success and maturity of the cybersecurity program.
• Policies and Procedures: Security policies and procedures help to reduce unintentional security errors and streamline incident management.
• Security Control Review and Enhancement: Regularly review the effectiveness of an organization’s security controls for managing cybersecurity risk.

• Employee Training and Awareness: Train employees on the latest threats to reduce exposure to phishing and similar threats.