7 Essential Steps for Building a Robust Cybersecurity Practice

Jay Ryerse

Small and medium-sized businesses worldwide are concluding that cybersecurity is a top priority. In a recent Vanson Bourne study, 92% of respondents said they would consider using or moving to a new IT service provider if they offered the “right” cybersecurity solution, and more than three-quarters of respondents said they were worried they would experience an attack sometime in the next six months.

Cybersecurity needs to be more than just a pledge — it needs to be a priority. This issue requires time, investment and talent to ensure that clients are receiving the service and protection they expect and is required in our current cybersecurity landscape. Ensuring that your organization is providing mission-critical services and consistently adding value to your platform is a daunting, but necessary, task.

A Path Forward

The good news for technology solution providers (TSPs) is that there’s hope and a path forward. The following seven steps are crucial to building a cybersecurity foundation that will ensure your organization is prepared to grow, invest and protect. Cybercriminals should no longer be able to freely devastate our landscape if TSPs follow these essential steps to counteract cyber threats.

Step 1: Evaluate your risk and consequences of a breach. Ransomware, data breaches, phishing scams and more have been running rampant since the beginning of the pandemic and are only expected to increase over time as the technology sector continues to grow. Organizations should conduct an internal assessment to highlight potential security gaps that create risks for themselves and their customers. Investing in the right cybersecurity tools is essential to finding risks that could not previously be detected. This practice requires regular upkeep and maintenance.

Step 2: Beef up your archaic security systems. Platforms and systems need to be re-architected with a security-first mindset. Regularly sending out cybersecurity hygiene tips to employees and customers can ensure that you are doing what you can to keep both your business and your assets safe. Many organizations wait for the next breach before implementing cybersecurity initiatives, or simply hope they are passed over. Security needs to come first. Do not put it off.

Step 3: Define a go-to-market strategy. Clients want to ensure their cloud servers, users, devices and connectivity are always available, secure and supported. Foundational cybersecurity services such as firewalls and antivirus will easily be within the capabilities of TSPs. But when it comes to providing robust network-level defense, security operations center (SOC) / security information and event management (SIEM ) is becoming a must have, as is the addition of extended detection and response (XDR) / managed detection and response (MDR) / endpoint detection and response (EDR) layered tools.

TSPs can now tap into “defense in depth” tools and easy-to-deploy managed solutions that feature …