The Top Cyber Investments For 2024

 

Introduction

There is no doubt that Cybersecurity and AI are  hot industries right now, and it is expected to be so for a long time to come, assuming that threats will keep emerging. So, what are the hot areas right to invest in for 2024? Here is a sampling:

1)     Get Cybersecurity Insurance:

As the new attack vectors are coming out, a lot of businesses are prone to be being hit. You may take the best defensive posture that you can, but that will not guarantee anything. You could still become a victim. All one can do is to mitigate that risk as much as possible, and protect your business financially. This is where investing in a good Cyber Policy will become of grave importance. But keep in mind that is getting much more difficult now to get comprehensive plan. The reason for this is that the carriers are putting businesses, especially the SMBs, through the wringer when it comes to compliance checks to make sure all of the controls are in place. For example, even before a business can apply, the owner must fill out a very comprehensive assessment questionnaire attesting that all checks and balances are in place, and any remediations have been deployed. In order to confirm this, a carrier can even conduct an audit to make confirm the responses in the survey. Only when this has passed the mark will the applicant be considered for a policy. Keep in mind that are premiums are also going up, primarily because of all of the ransomware attacks that have occurred recently. So now is the best time to lock into a policy.

2)     Implement DevSecOps:

This is a fancy term which simply means that the IT Security, Operations, and Software Development teams are working together as a cohesive unit in order to make sure that any software development project that takes place meets stringent security requirements. The emphasis of secure source coding has long been forgotten about, but not anymore. Businesses are realizing just how vulnerable Web and mobile apps are, and the need to make sure that the underlying engine that runs them is rock solid. Thus, one of the primary objectives of DevSecOps is not only to have an extra pair of eyes to QA the source code, but to implement the principles of automation as well. This will bring many benefits, such as Infrastructure as a Code, and sophisticated version control techniques, where the need to roll back to earlier versions of source code can happen seamlessly.

3)     The Zero Trust Framework:

This is another fancy of piece of techno jargon that means segmenting out your IT and Network Infrastructure, and implementing at three least or more layers of differing authentication protocols. This can also be referred to as Multifactor Authentication (MFA), but what makes this different is that with Zero Trust, nobody is trusted, not even longest-term employees in either the internal or external environments. Sound extreme? It is, but companies that have been implementing this have had some successes so far. But one of the key things here is that you should invest in some of the latest Cyber technologies that are out there. Using passwords and challenge/response will no longer suffice. It means it’s now time to get such items as the Next Generation Firewall, Biometric based Modalities, network security devices that make use of AI and ML algorithms, and SIEMS that allow your IT Security Team to get a holistic view of what is happening out there in real time, from one dashboard.

4)     Hire a professional trainer:

Having security awareness training programs is something that you hear all the time, and now with the Remote Workforce becoming a permanent fixture, you will hear more about it. The main problem here is that with employees WFH, it can be difficult to deliver this kind of training, and at the same time, hold the attention span of your workers that are attending. Many companies have tried to do this on their own internally, but with mixed results. So, it is highly recommended that you spend some extra dollars and hire a professional team of trainers to deliver to do the teaching. Of course, you will want to make sure that a deep level of Cyber experience, but they will know all of the tricks of the trade (such as using Gamification) to keep your employees engaged, and retain/apply what they have learned. This will be a longer-term investment, but the ROI will pay off.

5)     Get a virtual team:

The days of having a traditional CISO are now very quickly dwindling. Either they are getting fired, quit because they are burned out, or they are just too expensive to keep on board. So now, is your time to invest in vCISO services and get a sharp consultant on board that will get the job done, according to the timeframes you have set forth in the contract. Best of all, the hiring a vCISO will only be a fraction of the cost it would take to hire a full time CISO. Also, you will have the freedom for scalability, in other words, you can terminate and/or bring them back on board as needed. Also another advantage of this is that your vCISO will have a plethora of other contacts that you can also bring own board contractually to help with staff augmentation, data privacy compliance, etc.

6)     Get rid of your On Prem Infrastructure:

Keeping an IT/Network Infrastructure in house is now outdated. Not only is it costly, but it is a time consuming and administrative nightmare to keep up with all of the latest updates that are needed. It’s time to invest in a great Cloud platform, such as that of the AWS or Microsoft Azure, for just a fraction of the cost. Both of these providers offer affordable pricing, but best of all you can invest in the latest Operating Systems and software apps for a fixed monthly price, versus getting them at retail. Also, both of these providers offer many other solutions you can create and deploy at almost no extra cost. With WFH, this is the only way to go now into the future and stay ahead of your competition.