Five actions to secure organisation networks and infrastructure

Security is often seen simply as a cost centre, but security technology can allow business transformation and cost savings.

“One of the things we do is we’ve benchmarked and looked across our peers at what everyone else is doing and constantly looking at where do we sit?” says Jon Winbow of GSK. “We also delve into our incident response. Are we missing anything?

Taking quick and effective action after a cyber attack is discovered can save organisations money and protect their reputation, although putting an exact financial value on these things is tricky.

“Are there additional measures that we can take to help us to repel cyber attacks quicker?” says Jon Winbow. “It can be worth looking at the ‘kill chain’, where you really want to be repelling things early on an attack, rather than just as they’re about to get your crown jewels. We’re constantly looking at that.”

Measuring your organisation’s cyber security policies and performance against peers, and using cyber security industry standards and methodologies, such as ISO 27001, the International Information Security Standard can also help companies automate procedures and trim costs.

“Maybe you’re seeing less incidents compared with your peers,” says Jiang He, Risk Manager at financial services company Sun Life. “You need to continuously understand your own weaknesses and address these proactively,” says Jiang He, Risk Manager at financial services company Sun Life. “One approach is to compare your security posture with that of your peers by using industry framework. Maybe you will realise that you are better than your peers in certain domains but lagging in others. Such evaluation would provide you with a good opportunity to identify your priorities moving forward.”