In April, I attended the Operational Technology (OT) conference, hosted by CS4CA.com, which brought together many professionals from different industries with a common goal of protecting the critical assets that are the basis of this country’s infrastructure.
The primary focus this year, in April, was the importance of protecting OT from compromise. Many questions were discussed, such as: What am I trying to protect? Who are my adversaries? How do I know if I have been compromised? What is the best way to protect my assets?
Implementing a security framework will help you to better understand the security posture of your systems and will provide you with a solid return on investment. Most security frameworks require you to assess your assets and classify them by criticality. This approach will provide you with guidance on where to focus your resources. Implementing a security framework will require you to assess your systems for weaknesses. The bad guys are always looking to exploit the exploitable, so begin by looking for your weaker areas and prioritize your focus there. Enable strong detection methods and identify a response plan in case there are issues. A security framework will identify areas of improvement on detection and the time needed to respond. Detection and recover time can directly affect the availability of your systems, so implementing a security framework can protect your critical assets.
There is famous golf quote, “You drive for show, but you putt for dough.” You can spend your money on all the latest and greatest security tools and assessments, but are they really effective? At this year’s OT conference, the most common question was, “Now what?” In other words, “What do I do next? How do I know if it is enough? How do we fix all this stuff?”
It is very difficult to find your way around a new town without a GPS, the same is true for securing your systems. Get a road map (frame work) with your starting point and destination. With the changing nature of most organizations, and the growing complexity, if you do not have a security framework and a plan, prepare to get lost. At TalaTek, we provide services for building a security framework and we have the answers for the “now what?” and can assist you with creating solutions.
With years of service and expertise, we know how to lock it down. Don’t become a headline. Call us.
