What is Cybersecurity Posture? Key Steps and Insights

Imagine running an exclusive art gallery that holds invaluable artworks, artifacts, and treasures, but it only has a few security guards, few cameras, and no alarm systems. Would a thief walk out on such an opportunity? The answer is obvious – no. The same goes for any business that holds all its valuable data in the cloud. An organization is only ever safe if it has a strong cybersecurity posture; one that can prevent any and all traditional and modern cyber threats and crimes before they could happen. Almost 90 percent of data breaches occur due to poor cybersecurity posture, and that’s because organizations have limited knowledge of cyber risks and of their attack surface.

In this article, we’re going to cover what cybersecurity posture is, how you can oversee cybersecurity posture management and data security posture, and how you can evaluate your organization’s security through cybersecurity posture assessment.

What is Cybersecurity Posture?

The threat landscape has been rapidly evolving, with malicious actors using modern ways and sophisticated weapons to infiltrate organizations with malicious intent. Hence, it becomes important for businesses to ensure that their overall cybersecurity systems–especially those that are directly related to the Internet, are strong and unhackable. While organizations may tackle various scenarios from different departments individually, the collective approach and procedures for handling these issues are known as a cybersecurity posture.

Having a strong cybersecurity posture benefits the organizations in several ways:

• Protection against different cyber threats: It enables businesses to prevent cyber threats such as malware, ransomware, DDOS attacks, and other Advanced Persistent Attacks (APT).
• Protects sensitive data: A strong cybersecurity posture will help in safeguarding an organization’s confidential data.
• Adapt to future threats: It enables businesses to frequently assess security issues and quickly understand issues that are at-risk.
• Helps in decision-making: It allows businesses to quickly make strategic decisions based on the type of security issues they have encountered.

Cybersecurity Risk vs Cybersecurity Posture

While Cybersecurity Risk and Cybersecurity Posture are interrelated, the two concepts are different in their own ways. Many use them interchangeably, but cybersecurity risk and posture both have different implications and meanings. Cybersecurity Risk is the likelihood that an IT system or network would get exploited through vulnerabilities. It’s evaluated by the probability and the severity of data loss, security breaches, and disruption of an organization’s operations. Cybersecurity specialists run risk assessments within the organization’s cybersecurity landscape where they identify, analyze, and prioritize potential weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Risks are prioritized based on the impact of the threats and are quantified.

On the other hand, cybersecurity posture is when an organization assesses how well they can identify and prevent cyber threats. These assessments are qualitative and help businesses understand how effective their cybersecurity posture is and if they are capable of protecting their systems from potential cyber threats or not. While each department can tackle cyber-related issues individually, the collective and integrative approach to handling them is known as a cybersecurity posture.

The key point to be noted here is that the cybersecurity posture is only ever strong if there’s minimal cybersecurity risk and vice versa. Understanding how both of them play together, organizations are able to create a comprehensive strategy to protect their valuable data and assets.

How to Assess Your Cybersecurity Posture

An organization’s valuable asset is its data – from employee credentials to financial statements, each and everything is like a handful of diamonds that could cost businesses millions in loss if that data fell into the wrong hands.

According to IBM, in 2024, the average data breach cost reached $4.88 million, a 10 percent increase from last year. This only goes to show that it’s important for businesses to focus more on their cybersecurity resilience than ever.

To understand the current stance of your security, the first thing to do is run a security posture assessment. The goal of the assessment would be to identify any gaps or vulnerabilities in the security framework that could easily be exploited by attackers. The security posture assessment would help in making recommendations to improve and enhance the organization’s overall cybersecurity posture. A security posture assessment includes the following:

1. Evaluate an organization’s cybersecurity strengths and weaknesses.
2. Reviews and analyzes current security measures in place.
3. Reviews technical defenses, user access controls, security policies, and response strategies.

Below is a checklist to guide you through the important features you need to consider when running your cybersecurity posture assessment.

• Understand the business’s objectives: It’s important to recognize your organization’s goals, needs, and risk tolerance. This will help in setting clear goals for the assessment and will ensure that the cybersecurity strategy will align well with your objectives.
• Documentation Review: Once you’ve identified your objective, the next step would be to gather relevant documents and review them, including but not limited to:

1. Compliance frameworks
2. Policies and procedures
3. Security settings and configurations
4. Risk assessments
5. Incident response plans

• Analyze your attack surface: Analyze potential entry points from where an attacker could easily exploit the system’s vulnerabilities such as applications, networks, devices, and third-party vendors. It is aimed to help developers understand and manage the security risks of an application whilst they design and change it. Attack surface analysis maps out the parts of a system that need further reviewing and testing for security vulnerabilities.
• Evaluate Data Security Measures: To ensure that your data is protected against leaks and breaches, it’s important to regularly assess the data security measures set in place such as data masking, encryption, regular audits, and assessment controls. Security assessments help maintain an organization’s defenses against cyber attacks and protect sensitive data.
• Evaluate Incident Response Plan: Measure how well your organization is able to respond to cyber threats. A thorough incident response plan states clearly the steps needed to mitigate cyber attacks and how to start operations again. This plan can help organizations react to incidents such as breaches in security quickly and efficiently, minimizing damage.
• Choose your Cybersecurity Framework: While you may already have a cybersecurity framework in place, it’s important to evaluate it and further make changes to it to protect your data. Having a framework will help in identifying and detecting cyber threats and breaches and, in case of a cybersecurity incident, will help in recovering your systems quickly.

A few commonly used frameworks include:

1. NIST
2. COBIT 5
3. PCI DSS
4. ISO 27001

• Create a Roadmap: Based on your assessment’s findings, you can create a roadmap to improve your overall cybersecurity posture such as updating the incident response plan, enhancing employee training, implementing new security controls, and remediating vulnerabilities.
• Monitor Regularly: Frequently assessing your cybersecurity posture will ensure its effectiveness and help in adapting to evolving threats. Most organizations use continuous monitoring tools that allow them to monitor their networks. Additionally, these tools help in detecting threats that may bypass traditional defenses.
• External Expertise: External expertise such as cybersecurity consultants or experts can help assess your overall cybersecurity posture, providing you with detailed reports that align well with your objectives.

Common Cybersecurity Risks Affecting Posture

While organizations may take extensive measures to safeguard their systems, they must not lose their guard against the many risks involved within the security landscape. In fact, these risks–if unresolved significantly affect the overall posture of an organization’s cybersecurity. Below are some common risks that businesses should be aware of to avoid financial losses and reputational damage:

• Unknown Vulnerabilities: Attacks can easily find an entry point to the systems through unfamiliar or unmanaged weaknesses in the devices, networks, applications or even users. To mitigate these potential risks, it’s important to run frequent vulnerability assessments and patch management.
• Lack of Reporting: Insufficient monitoring, reporting, and assessment of vendor cybersecurity posture could make it difficult to determine vulnerabilities. Implementing vendor security assessments can help organizations evaluate the risks associated with using a third-party product.
• Inadequate Employee Security Practice: If employees are not trained to identify phishing or malware, they may fall victim to attackers who use simple methods such as sending fake emails from trustworthy organizations to breach the system through downloads or clicking on unfamiliar links.
• Outdated Security Measures: Outdated security controls such as firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion detection systems may create gaps in the organization’s defenses, paving the way for cyber attackers to exploit the system. To protect an organization’s system or networks, it’s important to follow best practices such as establishing centralized log management, employing detection tools, and keeping software up-to-date.
• Infrequent Monitoring: Lack of assessments and monitoring could make it challenging for businesses to maintain risk management procedures and adapt to modern threats. Hence, a continuous monitoring system or CSM is an ideal approach in automating the monitoring of vulnerabilities, information security controls, and other cyber threats.
• Accidental Disclosure: Unconsciously revealing confidential information to users who are unauthorized or leaving an important company’s tab open in the laptop with credentials and passwords emphasizes the need for countermeasures or security policies in the organization.
• Not Logging Off: There’s a gap for cybercriminals to infiltrate the systems if an employee doesn’t log off properly or if a network server has been left behind in a room that’s not been locked. Devices such as routers, servers, and intrusion detection systems are the main targets for attackers as they can easily modify or deny traffic to and from key hosts inside the network or from the organization.

These risks may easily affect your cybersecurity posture, however, there are several steps that can be taken to reduce the risks of cyber threats, such as:

1. Timely updating of computer systems, applications, and programs.
2. Switching to new products when necessary.
3. Encrypting outgoing data.
4. Ensuring employees get trained through various cybersecurity programs.
5. Creating strong passwords and adding two-factor authentications.
6. Utilizing cloud encryption.
7. Reducing the number of login attempts.
8. Putting in place a kill switch, allowing an IT expert to shut down all servers upon detecting a threat.
9. Ensuring no ultra-sensitive data is stored in the database.
10. Frequently backing up data.
11. Preventing unregistered devices from logging in to the organization’s networks.

Steps to Strengthen your Cyber Security Posture

The need to strengthen your cybersecurity posture has become more important now than ever. Cybercriminals are using modern tools and technologies to cause chaos in both small and big companies, governments, and even institutions. These attacks may range from minor damage to a major one such as an organization losing millions of dollars or losing its reputation and credibility altogether. The stakes have been much higher since the last decade and customers alike are well aware of the risks of handing over their personal information to companies.

Thus, investing your time and efforts in strengthening your organization’s cybersecurity posture will not only gain the trust you need from both your new and loyal customers but will also protect your systems from cyberattacks and potential risks. Here are some of the steps you can take to strengthen your cybersecurity posture:

• Regular security posture assessments: It is important to know where exactly your organization stands when it comes to tackling cybersecurity risks. Hence, for organizations of all scales and types, regularly conducting security posture assessments will help save the organization from potentially devastating cyber threats and attacks.
• Frequent monitoring of vulnerabilities: Keeping an eye out for network and software vulnerabilities may just save your organization from cyberattacks as even the slightest gap in the software or networks could lead to consequences that may be devastating. By ensuring the vulnerabilities are monitored, organizations reduce the risk of cyber threats and attacks, significantly minimize the impact of breaches, and protect their sensitive data from unauthorized individuals.
• Analyze gaps: Security controls help create a strong cybersecurity posture and guarantee that the organization is aligning well with its regulatory compliances. It’s crucial to frequently test the security controls and identify gaps so that you can be well-prepared for future threats and risks.
• Know the big picture: Understanding a few key security aspects can help determine the present health of your cybersecurity posture. These metrics could be of various instances, such as:- How many intrusion attempts were detected?- The response times of vulnerability patches- Rate of incidents- The severity level of certain cyber incidents- The response times of incidents and their time for remediation- How much traffic volume the business is generating
• Create CSIRP (A cybersecurity incident response plan): A CSIRP is an important document that guides users on how they can respond to severe security incidents. There are typically four phases that make up the overall CSIRP.
  • Prepare: A breach may occur anytime, but being prepared for it will help organizations respond to the incident quickly. In this phase, a comprehensive draft of the incident response plan is created where there’s an outline of individuals responsible for certain tasks, the procedures, and how to address each attack in its own way. An impactful incident response plan will also address the organization’s regulatory requirements, types of data, and the system’s security infrastructure. This helps organizations respond to issues quickly. In a CSIRP, there needs to be details about the incident response team and their role when an attack happens.
  • Detect and analyze: This phase in the CSIRP will act as a triggering moment for your organization, determining how you’d respond to such situations. While your plan may be fool-proof, there’s still a chance that a security incident might show up. Hence, the CSIRP should give organizations a way to report the incidents and ensure that its response is prioritized.
  • Contain, eradicate, and recover: This is the last step in the CSIRP where an organization focuses on three crucial steps: to contain the incident, eradicate threats, and recover from the attack. In the containment phase, the incident response team will do everything they can to stop the breach from causing further disruptions and to minimize the threat impact. Once contained, the team then cleans up and removes the threat either by destroying the malware or ensuring that no unauthorized users are active in the system. Lastly, once it’s ensured that the threat has been eliminated completely, the areas in the system that have been impacted will be returned back to normal after backups or updates.
  • Debrief: This is the last phase after the incident has been successfully tackled and all the security updates have been implemented. It’s important to sit back and ponder over the incidents that took place, evaluate the severity of it, and reassess whether or not your CSIRP is effective or not. At the end of the day, business owners should educate themselves about CSIRP so that it can be efficiently carried out.

Tips to Improve Your Cybersecurity Posture

Just as how a person continue to grow in their life – learning new things and improving themselves, businesses should consider improving their cybersecurity posture due to the exponential growth of sophisticated cyber threats. There’s no doubt that a lot of cyber threats go amiss or are detected after it’s too late. To avoid such issues, organizations should look for ways to continuously improve their security posture.

Having a good security posture means having strong defenses in place, such as:- Security tools such as anti-malware, antivirus, and firewalls– Data, Network, and Information Security- Penetration testing- Endpoint detection and response- Vendor risk and Vulnerability management

Additionally, following the below steps could help strengthen your organization’s overall cybersecurity posture:

• Use automation tools: Human error can cause serious distress to organizations and inefficiency in more than one way, but automation tools in the cyber security landscape can offer a comprehensive and updated overview of your system’s infrastructure, leading to a faster response time in identifying vulnerabilities and potential risks.

• Implementation of Policies and Controls: Once an organization establishes strong and clear policies that provide a framework to identify, access, and mitigate security risks, as well as procedures and controls, it can apply the same policies across various departments and databases, ensuring consistency in approach and responses.

• Spread Security Awareness: It’s effective to have frequent programs that train employees in preventing common cyber threats such as social engineering attacks, malware, and phishing. If all the employees have the knowledge on the best practices, then the likelihood of an organization falling victim to cyber threats reduces significantly.

• Use Advanced Security Tools: Technology has been evolving, and with it, businesses must adopt the new digital age as well. Using advanced security tools that will easily identify and mitigate leaks and breaches is one of the most important solutions an organization can invest its time and resources in.

• Enhance passwords and related processes: This may seem like a simple thing, but it’s also one that could easily be missed or forgotten. It’s important to ensure that you use unique passwords with good strength along with two-factor authentications to ensure no unauthorized user gets access to your systems.

• Regular data backups: Routinely backing up data can protect your businesses from losing valuable data. Back-ups can be scheduled in the cloud or at an offsite storage. This ensures that if an incident ever occurred, there would be a backup ready to quickly recover your systems.

• Create an incident management plan: Preparing a strong and effective incident response plan for future cybersecurity threats way ahead would minimize both damage and the time to recover from a certain incident. This would further build confidence in the processes and the overall posture of the organization.

• Install reliable cybersecurity solutions: Threats and cybercriminals are all around us, but to ensure that they avoid knocking on your doors, you should definitely check out and upgrade to solutions offered by leading cybersecurity providers like SentinelOne. However, make sure to update and, if necessary, upgrade the solutions regularly to prevent exposure to up-and-coming cyber threats.

• Adhere to Regulations and Compliance Standards: It is crucial to make sure that your business (of any scale) is adhering to compliance standards and industry-specific regulations. These actions and processes will ascertain protection for your business as well as help avoid situations where you may be required to pay hefty fines.

• Role-based access control: Using role-based access controls will ensure that your data isn’t available for misuse by unauthorized users. Moreover, monitoring network activity for unauthorized logins and detecting unusual behavior with the help of network monitoring tools can help maintain an efficient and stable IT infrastructure and resolve issues faster by detecting unusual behavior or detecting harmful actors in the network.

How to Monitor Vendors’ Cybersecurity Posture?

A mid to large-scale organization works with multiple vendors across departments, handling sensitive as well as business-crucial data. According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, 15 percent of breaches that occurred involved either a third party or supplier such as software supply chains, hosting partner infrastructures, or data custodians. Thus, organizations, before onboarding vendors involved in crucial processes, must ensure that the vendors are able to safeguard their data against potential cybersecurity threats and attacks.

Moreover, it’s risky to have a vendor who has a poor cybersecurity posture. They are prone to breaches, resulting in not just financial losses but reputational damage that could affect potential prospects, lawsuits from parties that have been affected, and increased audits. Below are 6 steps businesses can take to assess their vendor’s security posture:

• Assess the vendors: First and foremost, an organization should determine the vendors’ cybersecurity posture in detail. It can either be done manually by the organization or by using a platform that would automatically do it for them.

• Audit Regularly: Regularly conduct audits of vendors to make sure that they are sticking to the security policies and cybersecurity best practices. The audits would include reviewing their cybersecurity controls and incident response plans.

• Rigorous Monitoring: Conducting frequent and constant monitoring of the process on the vendors’ side can help organizations to track any changes in their security posture. Organizations can easily set up alerts whenever a vendor’s ratings regarding their cybersecurity posture have dropped.

• Test their Security: One way to test a vendor’s cybersecurity posture is by determining how well it follows the relevant security testing processes and procedures such as vulnerability, penetration, and social-engineering testing.

• Demonstration of Data Protection: The vendor should be able to easily demonstrate how the organization’s data is being protected and in what ways. This would include documents containing information on encryption standards, and industry-specific policies and standards.

• Look for Certifications: Vendors who have industry-specific certifications like SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST 800-53, and PCI DSS can be indicated as having good cybersecurity posture and processes that will keep an organization’s data safe and secure.

Overseeing these steps can help organizations monitor their vendor’s cybersecurity posture and help reduce the risks of potential cyber-attacks.

How SentinelOne Can Help?

SentinelOne provides a holistic cybersecurity solution with AI-powered threat detection and autonomous response. Its behavioral and static AI engines help identify and neutralize threats in real-time across multiple attack vectors. This solution is useful for organizations dealing with sophisticated cyber threats, as it protects without relying on signatures or constant human intervention.

At the core of SentinelOne’s offering is its endpoint protection platform (EPP). SentinelOne’s combined EPP+EDR solution safeguards devices against advanced malware, exploits, and fileless attacks. It provides deep visibility that allows teams to track every activity across endpoints, which gives them crucial context for threat hunting and incident response. Its continuous monitoring is applied across all Windows, macOS, Linux, and IoT workloads on the cloud. SentinelOne’s patented Storyline™ technology builds context and correlations to speed up security event analysis and responses. Its unique Offensive Security Engine™ with Verified Exploit Paths™ can conduct an attack path analysis and predict threats before they happen.

SentinelOne can roll back changes for affected systems and ensure cloud security posture management, container security, and identity protection. It uses an API-first architecture and hyper-automation, advanced workflows, and seamless security tool integrations. The platform provides granular visibility and offers a single-pane-of-glass view across cloud estates. It consolidates security functions, reduces operational overheads, and improves mean times to detect and respond to attacks.

Book a free live demo to learn more.

Conclusion

To summarize, it is significant to have a strong cybersecurity posture so that organizations can easily prevent and mitigate cyber threats. While it’s a long and painstaking procedure, it makes it worthwhile in the long run as it helps businesses to easily identify vulnerabilities and take defensive plus preventive actions as quickly as possible. Some of the key elements of cybersecurity posture are risk assessment to understand how well the system is able to determine the risks and vulnerabilities, implementing and updating security protocols, and regularly conducting employee training.

However, organizations must take the first step to invest in their security posture to ensure that they can protect their data, reduce vulnerabilities in their system, and create trust and confidence among their customers.

FAQs

1. What is data security posture?

Data security posture can be described as the collective strength of your data protection measures, including encryption, access controls, backup systems, and security policies that guard sensitive information across your organization’s infrastructure.

2. What is Cybersecurity Posture Assessment?

Cybersecurity posture assessment is a comprehensive evaluation of an organization’s security infrastructure, policies, and practices to identify vulnerabilities, measure effectiveness, and determine compliance with security standards and regulations

3. What is a cyber posture score?

The cyber posture score is a quantitative score for the organization’s general security strength, generally on a 0-100 score basis. It depends on parameters such as vulnerability and management, controls, incident response capabilities, and compliance status.

4. What is the security posture in cybersecurity?

Security posture describes the overall security status of an organization. It defines its ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber threats. It also outlines technical controls, policies, and procedures, and advocates cybersecurity awareness training for the entire organization.

5. What are the Categories of Cybersecurity Posture?

The most important categories of cybersecurity posture are:

• Network Security
• Endpoint Security
• Cloud Security
• Application Security
• Data Security
• Identity and Access Management
• Incident Response
• Security Awareness and Training

6. How can organizations assess and strengthen their cybersecurity posture?

Organizations can improve their cybersecurity posture by:

• Conducting regular security assessments
• Implementing continuous monitoring
• Maintaining updated security policies
• Providing employee security training
• Using automated security tools like SentinelOne