Authored by Daniel Poliquin, Principal of Deloitte Advisory Services and Randy Parrow, Specialist Master, Deloitte Advisory Services.

They say hindsight is 20/20, but often that’s not good enough — particularly when it comes to protecting your data. Cybersecurity can mean the difference between the success and failure of your organization. Whether it is a small family business or a large corporation, your focus needs to shift to security foresight to protect your business and customer interests.

Addressing Key Cybersecurity Issues

The internet was designed to share information, not protect it, which means it’s up to you to fill this gap. Organizations should take immediate steps to shift from hindsight to foresight to address key security vulnerabilities, including:

• Lack of prioritization: Without prioritizing data and data structure, securing business operations becomes nearly impossible.
• Ineffective triage and analysis: To protect data, it is vital to understand what data could be at risk before a security breach.
• Lack of visibility: To understand the magnitude of a security breach, security analysts must understand the traffic that preceded the event.
• Lack of alignment across the organization: For employees to learn to enhance data security, business leaders need to communicate the importance of protecting information.
• Assumption of false positives: Unreliable technology can lead analysts to misinterpret the severity of threats to security. They may even assume the threat is not real.

With so many variables to consider, it’s not just a question of where a threat might strike next, but when organizations can avoid security nightmares, such as credit card or IP theft, by taking the right steps ahead of time.

Put Out the Fire: How to Increase Cyber Intelligence

In response to corporate security threats, Deloitte Advisory developed the Security Intelligence Framework utilizing the IBM Security portfolio, which helps intelligence-driven organizations create a foundation for more stable cybersecurity operations.

Learn More about the Deloitte Security Intelligence Framework

While external forces pose a constant threat to organizations, internal factors — such as unreliable analytics technology, flawed event analysis and delayed threat responses — can compound an already complex security environment.

Deloitte Advisory and IBM give clients access to the right tools at the right time to help stem the effects of a security breach. Users learn to take a more proactive approach to prevent future incidents by building on their current security capabilities. All the while, they’re gaining insight and utilizing management assistance to develop a stronger, safer future for their organizations.

If you’re concerned about your organization’s ability to quickly detect and contain cyberthreats, learn more about this new security framework. We’re helping some of the world’s leading institutions bring together people, processes and technology to build more secure, vigilant and resilient organizations.