Manual security management can quickly lead to disaster for both the business and you as a leader. Find out how to go digital with our five top tips to digitise security management from Vilde Nylund Johnsen, security advisor and Helle Ronne senior consultant at Sopra Steria Norway.
It’s no secret that the threat landscape is becoming increasingly complex. So, how are today’s businesses meeting this challenge? Surprisingly, many still rely on manual security management, often through static spreadsheets that become large, cumbersome, and difficult to navigate. This is not only inefficient; it’s dangerous and exposes businesses – and you as a leader – to significant risk.
Today’s threat actors have highly professional IT departments dedicated to finding new vulnerabilities and tailoring attacks. For them, manual security management processes are a gift. Manual analysis and measures in spreadsheets do not provide adequate protection against current threats and vulnerabilities.
Lack of sources and tools
In a master’s thesis at NTNU (a university in Norway) on security management in Norwegian businesses, leaders and representatives from four supervisory authorities were interviewed about the tools they use for security management. The findings show that several of the respondents lack the necessary sources and tools to provide an adequate data foundation for evaluating the security status. As a result, security management is carried out manually.
Time and lack of personnel are also highlighted as the biggest barriers to conducting security risk assessments, according to last year's "State of Cybersecurity" survey, from the international IT professional association ISACA.
This is concerning.
Manual management is time-consuming, scales poorly, and can lead to a loss of overview regarding the business’s security status. It also makes it difficult to communicate risk and security status to management effectively.
Critical to digitalise
Digital security management allows businesses to scale and proactively manage security. New threats can be quickly detected and handled at the level where they belong. It enables rapid response, allows processes to be automated, and provides a real-time situational overview that can be sent directly to the leader’s PC. By utilising artificial intelligence, you can even uncover future threats, vulnerabilities, and potential deviations, and effectively implement risk-reducing measures.
Digital security management, therefore, makes the business much more resilient and gives leaders the ability to actually manage security within the organisation. And yes, this is entirely achievable.
Here are five tips for leaders who want to digitise security management:
- Map the business’ values and value chains and assess how critical and vulnerable they are.
- Establish a clear link between security requirements and security controls and tie them directly to the business’s values.
- Ensure that security is not an isolated activity but is integrated with the entire organisation.
- Visualise the security status for management. Tailor the information so it can be effectively used by leadership to make decisions.
- Look ahead: Use digital technology to see how the security status relates to changes in the environment. This way, you can also envision and test the effects of different future scenarios. The next step might be to use artificial intelligence to predict risks and monitor security requirements so that the business can react even faster to new security challenges.
A leader’s responsibility to keep up digitally
With extensive regulations such as NIS2 and the EU Digital Operations Act (DORA), it is crucial that leadership takes control of security management. Without digitisation, the gap between the business and threat actors will only grow. The consequences of a security breach could be catastrophic—not just for the business, but also for the leader’s responsibility and reputation.
So, take control before someone else does.