Cybersecurity is a business risk that requires year-round attention. However, this is easier said than done, and if you’re like many businesses whose IT teams are bogged down with necessary day-to-day operations, your cybersecurity strategy may be lacking the attention it deserves.
Rehmann has developed our CyberReady process to help businesses feel empowered about their cybersecurity strategy again. This five-step, four-workshop process will provide your business with one solid cybersecurity plan ready for implementation. We sat down with Paul Kennedy, senior manager of technology solutions, to gather his insights about the CyberReady process.
Overview
At its core, the CyberReady process helps businesses create a comprehensive cybersecurity plan or strengthen an existing plan. The goal is to ensure that your cybersecurity strategy is executing several key functions within the organization on a consistent basis. By the end of the process, businesses have a plan they can put in place that will keep processes running smoothly.
Why is this important?
Threats, such as ransomware and business email compromise, can have significant financial and reputational impacts on your business. If a hacker gets into your systems, they will often require a large ransom for you to regain access. Furthermore, cybersecurity incidents halt business operations for an average of seven to 20 days. Losing any operational days in industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, and construction can result in further financial loss and reputation damage with clients.
Imagine your cybersecurity strategy is like a dam keeping threat actors out. If your cybersecurity plan has cracks, just like a water will get through a dam, threat actors will get through your security measures. You don’t just want to use the newest, flashiest security tool that a vendor tries to sell; you want a strategy that accounts for risks specific to your business and then build out security measures based on those risks.
What is the time investment?
Workshop #1 – The Strategy workshop is a 90-minute to two-hour workshop that brings executive leadership, IT, and key representatives of the business together. In this first workshop, we make sure your team is educated on basics of cybersecurity and gauge where your cybersecurity strategy currently stands so all are on the same page.
Workshop #2 – In the Identify phase of workshops, we meet with different representatives in the business who can speak to the data assets that are critical to the business. Each meeting will run about one to two hours and will typically total 10-15 hours of time from your team to complete.
Workshop #3 – In the Protect workshop, we perform a gap assessment against industry- leading cybersecurity frameworks. This portion of the workshop is spent heavily with the IT leadership team. We talk through 100+ cybersecurity controls that the National Institute of Standards and Technology suggest you have in place. If you don’t have these strategies in place, we explore what it may look like for your business to put them in place. This workshop usually takes three to six hours of your team’s time.
After the first three workshops are complete, we move to step #4 of the CyberReady process, which is building out your business’s cybersecurity strategy. In the build-out, Rehmann Technology Solutions has the engineering expertise to help you deploy security tools and controls if you would like the support. With decisions made on how to secure your environment, that brings us to the final workshop.
Workshop #4 – The Policy workshop builds out the cybersecurity policies and procedures needed to document your cybersecurity expectations and capture plans for how to respond when something goes wrong. This helps ensure that your leadership team and key representatives know how to utilize the cybersecurity strategies to their full potential, even after the CyberReady process is completed. Our Rehmann team can take on the extensive work required to capture the information from the prior workshops to draft your policies and procedures. This process typically requires approximately 10 hours of your team’s time to review, understand, and adopt the draft policies and procedures.
What is next?
It is important to monitor and maintain your cybersecurity environment after you go through the CyberReady process. We will set up and educate your team through these workshops to make that a manageable process. However, if your organization does not have the capacity or skillsets in house, our team can also help provide you with the necessary leadership or technical resources.
What is the takeaway?
Visibility is one of the greatest takeaways of completing the CyberReady workshops. Completing the workshops means that you’ll know where you stand as a business regarding your cybersecurity strategy and be able to move forward confidently knowing all key representatives in your business know as well.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can download our free Five-Step Process Guide to get started today!
