Simply defined, a Cybersecurity Assessment evaluates your organization’s readiness to respond to a cyber event.

These evaluations determine the amount of danger your company faces as well as the significant flaws in your cybersecurity infrastructure, policies, and processes.

As cyber threats evolve and become more complicated and virulent with each passing day, all firms should consider investing in regular cybersecurity audits. This is the only way to stay on top of cyber threats, ensuring that your cybersecurity plan is robust enough to cope with any cyber threats, and keep your organization running smoothly.

While standard cybersecurity audits, such as ISO 27001:2013, are important for demonstrating how you manage information security to external stakeholders, I’ve attempted to focus on assessments that provide a speedier and, in many cases, more contextual picture in this piece. These evaluations are simple to complete and can significantly improve your cybersecurity posture this year:

1. Cyber Essential:

Cyber Essentials (also known as CE) is a government-backed certification program in the United Kingdom that allows businesses to ensure that they are safe from the most common cyber threats and demonstrate their commitment to the cyber security of their business information and sensitive customer data.

It’s important to discuss CE and emphasize that the UK government’s goal is admirable. In most circumstances, ISO 27001 and NIST have been and maybe extremely difficult for micro, small, and medium-sized organizations. This is where Cyber Essentials comes in. Although it is a brief evaluation, it is ‘strong’ and relevant enough to identify major and basic weaknesses that an organization may encounter.

Cyber Essentials (a self-assessment) and Cyber Essentials Plus (a full certification) are the two options (this includes a technical verification). One of the simplest methods to guarantee that your company is protected against the most prevalent cyber threats is to take the Self-Assessment.

Many of the internet’s common/unskilled cyber thieves are seeking easy targets that aren’t protected by Cyber Essentials protections. Once you’ve earned the Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus certification, you’ll have at least some rest of mind knowing that you’re safe against the most prevalent and readily avoidable assaults.

Cyber Essentials is also one of the simplest methods to reassure prospective clients or business partners that they’re dealing with a company dedicated to cybersecurity and that its basic policies are being reviewed.

2. NIST Health Check:

A NIST Health Check is an examination of your organization’s cyber health and resilience against the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, as the name implies. NIST Health Checks are usually quick and inexpensive.

The NIST Health Check procedure at Cyber Management Alliance is simple: you will be given a self-assessment form to complete. After that, a cybersecurity specialist is assigned to your company, who goes through the information you’ve provided with you. The expert conducts a high-level evaluation of your significant papers and artifacts over a short time, usually a day, and provides you with a formal assessment report.

Apart from identifying vulnerabilities, the report will emphasize the cybersecurity expert’s view on your overall compliance and incident response maturity. It will also include suggestions for correcting any flaws that demand immediate attention.

The NIST Health Check is appropriate for organizations that wish to get a head start on achieving comprehensive cyber resilience by developing an actionable improvement plan.

3. Ransomware Readiness Assessment:

As the name implies, this evaluation is focused on determining your organization’s capacity to respond to and control a ransomware assault, which is now the number one developing issue in the world of cybersecurity.

A Ransomware Readiness Assessment is the most efficient approach to confirm your security investments and determine whether your IT infrastructure is up to par. It also aids in the identification of flaws in your current ransomware methods, as well as the understanding of particular concerns in your plans and procedures.

This assessment looks at how you address critical technical issues including user access and control, Web Browser Management and DNS Filtering, Patch and Update Management, Application Integrity and Allowlists, Robust Data Backup, and Network Perimeter Monitoring, among others.

Given the exponential growth in ransomware attacks and their very destructive results for businesses, the Ransomware Readiness Assessment is becoming increasingly crucial.

The Assessment is an excellent approach to see if your ransomware preparation matches the dangers, threat actors, and risk mitigation techniques that your company faces. You’ll also get personalized advice on how to improve your detection and response skills.

4. Breach Readiness Assessment:

A Breach Readiness Assessment is a more in-depth, score-based, and focused assessment of your company’s breach readiness capabilities. Its sole purpose is to answer one simple question: Are you ready for a data breach?

This evaluation looks at a specific group of people’s breach readiness and how they behave in a specific cyber-attack scenario aimed at a specific, important asset.

The Breach Readiness Assessment is usually done in combination with a Cyber Crisis Tabletop Exercise. The participants are monitored and assessed against a set of predetermined criteria during the activity.

This cybersecurity risk assessment is a low-cost technique to illustrate how a specific group of employees will behave in the event of a cyber-attack. It’s also critical to meet current and future regulatory obligations with the least amount of downtime possible.

5. SIEM Use Case Assessment:

The SIEM Assessment is a vital cybersecurity assessment that analyzes how your SIEM system is designed and evaluates the operational side of the SOC team.

Use Cases are used to generate alerts for malicious behavior, and the logic and configurations in place must be successful. This important part of your cyber capabilities is also assessed by the SIEM Use Case Assessment. A review of monitoring standards and policies, as well as incident triage, investigations, and analysis, is usually included.

Conducting a SIEM and Use Case Assessment for your company will help you understand how your log management practices correspond with NIST’s Computer Security Incident Handling Guide: NIST SP 800-61 Revision 2.

It can also assist you in determining whether or not your present SIEM setup and settings are adequate.

6. Cyber Incident Response Maturity Assessment:

This is the most in-depth, evidence-based assessment of your organization’s cyber resilience and disaster preparedness.

This cybersecurity evaluation is based on more than simply a stakeholder interview. It checks your SIEM setup, security controls, technology stack implementation, and SOC activities, as well as every in-scope product.

The official report we provide after the Cyber Incident Response Maturity Assessment may provide a thorough picture of the company’s cyber-resilience maturity as assessed against simple NIST-based Incident Handling categories. You may also see how your approach to incident response matches with Annex A.16.1, Incident Management Lifecycle, of ISO 27001:2013.

While your company may engage in a variety of cybersecurity audits and assessments, the ones listed above cover all of the important components of cyber resilience that you should consider.

Regularly doing these evaluations will assure your company’s cybersecurity health and help you stay on track with the correct technology investments and incident response strategies and processes.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com