The Cyber Security Lifecycle

In today’s digital age, effective cybersecurity is not a luxury – it’s a necessity.

As businesses become increasingly reliant on online platforms to operate and grow, they also become more vulnerable to a spectrum of cyber threats. From sophisticated phishing scams to aggressive ransomware attacks, the risks are ever-present and evolving. Inadequate security measures can lead to devastating data breaches, exposing sensitive customer information, intellectual property, and trade secrets.

The message is clear: robust cybersecurity is not just about defense; it’s about maintaining the trust of your customers, preserving your competitive edge, and ensuring the continuity of your business in a landscape where cyber threats are an omnipresent challenge.

Upstart Cyber provides a comprehensive lifecycle focused on continual improvement and working closely alongside our clients to develop their Information Technology (IT) environment, improve security posture, identify and mitigate risks, build a security-minded culture, and continually adapt to the rapidly evolving world of cyberthreats.

We strive to offer simple, holistic, and flexible approach to design, implement, and continuously improve your cyber security and IT management; assessing, determining, risk management and mitigation, and long-term management.

In addition, we can help you achieve regulatory compliance, prepare you for accreditation audits, and even establish your own internal Information Security (IS) policies, procedures and guidelines.

Our lifecycle is broken into three distinct phases; assess, secure, and maintain.

Cyber Security Made Easy

Assess

Following the completion of successful assess and secure phases, the maintain phase focuses on the ongoing monitoring, maintenance, and improvement of the organization’s cybersecurity posture.

We begin to evaluate the current state of your organization’s cybersecurity posture and Information Technology (IT) footprint, conducting activities such as establishing an asset inventory, performing vulnerability scanning and assessments, and calculating and scoring risks for mitigation.

We’ll identify gaps in coverage for technical security controls as well as policies, procedures, guidelines, regulatory and compliance requirements, and prioritized risk mitigation and acceptance. Utilizing the latest threat intelligence, we’ll also adjust our strategy to accommodate to the latest trends and threats in the cybersecurity landscape.

We then take all this information to create a personalized, prioritized, and simple plan to secure your business by addressing all identified risks and/or adjusting for new considerations.

The assess phase can be initiated by introducing new information technology (IT) systems to the business, evolving business needs, regulatory or compliance requirements, or most commonly during the end of an annual review period.

Secure

The secure phase involves implementing proactive measures to protect against cyber threats and maintain a strong cybersecurity posture.

Findings from the assess phase are used to create an implementation plan that addresses all of the items identified in the assessment phase.

These can include software-based security controls, such as firewalls and Intrusion Detection/Prevention System (IDS/IPS), endpoint protection software, and configuration control software as well as “logical” controls such as policies, procedures, and guidelines established to secure business processes.

In addition to your businesses-specific needs, we also look to implement any “best practice” standards, such as role-based access controls (RBACs), separation of duties, and the concept of least-privilege permissions management.

Any regulatory compliance requirements or considerations are also addressed during this stage. 

The primary goal of the secure phase is to implement the changes identified during the assess phase.

Maintain

This includes things like administrating patch management to keep devices up to date, security configuration controls, incident detection and response, backup and disaster recovery, and security awareness training.

The maintain phase ensures that your organization’s improved cybersecurity posture remains persistent, well-managed, and documented. Software security controls are monitored for any signs of malicious activity, and incident response procedures are followed to remediate any threats found on your network and/or devices.

Logging and monitoring tools help us to keep a close eye on your network and its operations, automatically correlating and identifying signs of malicious behavior or malintent. This allows us to constantly monitor for signs of behavior that would align with attempted cybersecurity attacks, utilizing technologies such as heuristics and behavioral analysis to correlate objectives with actions observed; ensuring you are protected from the latest cyberthreats and advanced persistent threats (APTs).

The timeframe spent in this phase largely depends on your organization. Once new business needs are identified, regulatory and compliance considerations changed,  new cybersecurity trends develop, or the annual review is due, we move back into the assess phase.

The traditional model of cyber security as an overlay of a fixed IT network is inefficient, dated and leaves too much room for error. In today’s complex and ever evolving cyber environment, there’s seldom a “traditional” network edge; networks can be local, cloud-based, or a mix of the two, with resources and workers located anywhere. That’s why we’ve created a team that is expert in both IT infrastructure engineering and implementation, and in world-class cyber security, including ‘risk-based access’ and ‘context-aware security.’

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We welcome you to visit our blog page, and to sign up for our blog, in order to learn more about recent cyber security developments. The old saying that “knowledge is power” could easily be re-phrased as “knowledge is your best defense”.