A successful cybersecurity strategy aligns technology, people and processes.

Digital Transformations mean more connected environments and more vulnerabilities.  Systems will be more open than ever before to clients, partners, suppliers, consumers, and employees.  Consumer facing web presence means more connections to backend systems and more opportunities for attackers to exploit weak links, resulting in access to company systems and data. 

A Digital Transformation alone is a huge undertaking; staying ahead of competitive threats demands changing business models and processes.  Adding to the list is the absolute requirement to ensure that addressing security threats is central to the conversation.  A recent Forbes study stated that 69% of senior executives are rethinking their cybersecurity strategy because of Digital Transformation.

Relying on technology alone to deliver security monitoring is an inadequate solution for combating cyberattacks.  A successful strategy incorporates technology, people and processes and requires tight alignment between the traditional IT professionals and cybersecurity experts.  Unfortunately, seamless digital process flows increase the opportunity for cyberattacks to infiltrate the entire organizations.

As recently reported in Harvard Business Review, executives’ mental models are often to blame for weak defenses to cybersecurity. The problem is that the executives approach cybersecurity as a finite problem to be treated rather than as the ongoing process that it really is. All too often executives focus on risk mitigation rather than the more important aspect of risk management.

Because no system or infrastructure will be “absolutely impenetrable” a better way of assessing and evaluating success is to measure vulnerabilities that are found and fixed.  When the focus is shifted to finding the cracks in the system leaders will shift focus from building the right system to building the right process.