Cybersecurity remains one of the major concerns for businesses in 2022, with many companies allocating more of their IT budgets to beefing their cyber defenses. Doing the same for your business would be wise, although you need to be smart about it. If you want to ensure the best protection for your IT systems this year and beyond, one area you need to look into is threat remediation.
What is threat remediation?
Threat remediation is the active process of identifying and eradicating cyberthreats and reducing their impact on your business. These threats could be as common as phishing and malware or as sophisticated as Ransomware-as-a-Service.
Threat remediation is often mistaken for threat mitigation, but while the two are related, their goals are inherently different. The latter is concerned with reducing the risk of cyberattacks hitting your business, whereas remediation is concerned with threat response and ensuring the attack doesn't happen again.
Effective remediation requires visibility into your IT systems. This is why procedures like constant network monitoring and vulnerability management are key components of a functional threat remediation strategy. These ensure that cyberthreats, network failures, and possible indications of yet unknown threats are detected and addressed as quickly as possible.
How do you expedite threat remediation?
You never know when cyberattacks will happen or how quickly they can compromise your business, so you need to be vigilant to ensure an immediate response. If you want to accelerate remediation, you need to follow these best practices:
Scan your IT systems for vulnerabilities
Threat actors can exploit various vulnerabilities in your networks, such as unpatched software and unprotected devices, to steal data or hijack your IT systems. Vulnerability management solutions enable you to scan for and address potential weaknesses so these cannot be used by cybercriminals.
But how often should you perform a scan? The answer depends on a few factors, such as compliance requirements, security goals, and your ability to remediate. Some companies make do with monthly or quarterly scans, but a more frequent schedule may be better for your company. If you want to find the scanning frequency that works best for your business, turn to cybersecurity experts like Fidelis . Their specialists will help you formulate a scanning strategy based on your business’s unique needs.
Prioritize vulnerabilities for patching
You need to carefully plan which IT assets will be scanned and patched first, with critical ones getting top priority. Otherwise, you might burden your IT staff with patching noncritical segments of your IT environment while leaving high-value areas vulnerable to threat actors. For example, vulnerabilities that grant access to public business information, like your phone number, should be placed behind weaknesses that potentially lead to sensitive data, such as customer information.
Automate the process
Automating remediation eliminates human error and ensures that key processes like scanning and analysis are performed with little to no input from IT staff. Automated endpoint detection and response systems, for instance, can scour your network 24/7 for possible anomalies. These anomalies are then removed or reported to your IT administrators once they are identified as threats. Furthermore, automation frees your IT personnel to focus on other important tasks, like troubleshooting and maintaining IT equipment.
Work with experts
Effective threat remediation requires a lot of work. You’ll need to make a list of your IT assets and identify, prioritize, and patch vulnerabilities, among other steps. Even with an in-house IT department, the whole process can be tedious, and one wrong move can be detrimental to your business’s finances, productivity, and cybersecurity.
The best recourse is to entrust such a crucial process to a managed IT services provider like Fidelis . We have the tools and expertise needed to flawlessly accomplish critical procedures like network monitoring and vulnerability assessment and management. And because your own employees are crucial to your network security, we can train them in cybersecurity best practices so they know how to avoid and respond to today’s most dangerous cyberthreats.
Find out more about data breaches and how we can help you prevent them from happening to your business by downloading this free eBook today.
