Threat Remediation: 6 Steps to Remediate Security Threats
Today, digital technologies have become the heart and soul of enterprises as these technologies are revolutionizing the culture and economy of the world. However, businesses are dealing with cyber threats that have devastating effects on the business reputation due to the rise of creative cybercriminals.
According to a research report by Gartner, the global security market will be worth $170.4 billion by 2022. However, based on the research report of Varonis, only 5% of the organizations will be able to protect their data even after this huge amount of spending on cybersecurity.
The data assets of an organization have to be protected despite the number of business operations involved. Threat remediation is used to identify cyber threats and devise a plan for handling the issues effectively to make the organization cyber-resilient.
This blog post will discuss threat remediation and the steps involved in remediating the security threats of an organization.
What is threat remediation?
Threat remediation in cybersecurity is a structured approach that helps enterprises to identify and mitigate IT security threats. This structured approach enables the organization to devise a plan to detect threats well in advance and mitigate the length and breadth of the cyber threats.
A robust and strategic approach is required to minimize and counter the frequent and sophisticated cyberattacks in organizations. With threat remediation, organizations can address security issues immediately and handle them effectively to avoid further damage to business operations.
6 Steps Involved in Threat Remediation
Here are the 6 steps involved in threat remediation that effectively implement the right security system within the organization. Following are the threat remediation steps that secure the organization against vulnerabilities.
1. Administer a Standard Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is a process in which the risks are being identified to understand the potential hazards that can impact the security of the organization. The process starts with an evaluation of the current IT infrastructure to identify the vulnerabilities. A thorough evaluation is conducted by examining the current security architecture, processes, policies, and strategies of the organization.
2. Threat Prioritization
Threat prioritization is the key to threat remediation when the organization has to deal with a vast number of security issues. If the risks are not prioritized effectively, then the IT team has to burden themselves with extra work by exposing the security of the organization.
Prioritization is performed based on the severity level of the threats and the vulnerability that can pose a bigger risk to the enterprise/system will be given priority. The higher the severity level, the higher the priority level so that it can be addressed first. Once the vulnerabilities are prioritized, a proper defense mechanism can be planned and executed.
3. Developing Vulnerability Solutions
The information gathered during the monitoring process and risk assessment will be used to develop a structured approach for threat remediation based on the priority level of the threats. The vulnerabilities are recorded, risk levels are identified, the effort required to solve is estimated, and a plan is devised to address the issue based on the IT configurations in this step.
A standard IT configuration has to be enforced throughout the enterprise by deploying a vulnerability management system.
4. Implement a Monitoring Process
Setting up a monitoring system enables the organization to receive alerts as the system monitors for vulnerabilities continuously. If the enterprise’s security infrastructure is left unmonitored, then there will be more data breaches. The active monitoring system includes gathering, examination and segregation of data for remediation. The data segregated for remediation are the indicators of potential vulnerabilities.
5. Patching up of Vulnerabilities
Vulnerabilities are detected and reviewed several times to provide the best security infrastructure for the organization. In case of any sort of security patch is found during the monitoring process or testing, the same will be analyzed to implement the right security measures.
6. Employee Training
Why employee training? Employee training is very critical as it empowers the employees with the potential threats that can harm the organizational infrastructure. Creating awareness on the cybersecurity threats will enable the employees to be alert, identify the threats and intimate them to the security team if needed.
The training will bring a standard security culture amongst the staff in the organization as they start following safe browsing tactics and being cautious against suspicious email attachments and links.
Conclusion
The main objective of threat remediation is to prevent cyberattacks from entering the enterprise security system through various security susceptibilities. Threat remediation is an active approach to find cybersecurity solutions. It can be defined as the process of risk assessment, identification of threat indicators, flagging of warnings, threat prioritization, and resolution in a cyclic fashion.
The various threat remediation tools used are automated questionnaires, security ratings, NIST framework, vulnerability assessment tools, breach and attack simulation tools (BAS), etc. To achieve the best result in threat remediation, repeat the above process to ensure ongoing security for the enterprise. Threat remediation is not a one-time solution, it is an ongoing process.
