Smarter cybersecurity program management starts with these 3 pillars
The average global cost of a data breach dropped 9% in 2024, but not because of a decrease in the frequency or severity of cyberattacks. Instead, it was an increase of “faster identification and containment.”
Effective cybersecurity program management can help you limit an incident’s financial and operational impact, protect your reputation and maintain compliance. And it starts with a program that’s both comprehensive and continuously validated.
The 3 pillars of an effective cybersecurity program
Cybersecurity is more than a set of annual activities to maintain compliance, or even the daily operations you employ to keep data security.
To build a resilient, robust cybersecurity program, you need to include three pillars:
- Cybersecurity operations: Your day-to-day or regularly recurring cybersecurity activities
- Governance: The efforts you take to manage risk, compliance and program oversight
- Testing: The ongoing testing and assessments you use to validate the effectiveness of your controls and overall program
Regular testing, combined with strong governance practices, helps ensure your daily operations support incident response, threat detection and the ongoing effectiveness of security controls.
Without all three pillars, organizations risk overlooking vulnerabilities that could lead to serious security incidents or compliance failures.
Pillar 1: Cybersecurity operations
Cybersecurity operations (SecOps) refer to the tools, processes and personnel needed to monitor, detect, investigate and respond to security threats in real time. It’s a critical component of any cybersecurity program, helping protect your organization’s assets against evolving threats.
Your SecOps can include:
- Endpoint detection and response to monitor activity on endpoints — such as laptops, desktops, servers and mobile devices — to detect threats and respond to them quickly.
- 24/7 security monitoring to detect threats in real time.
- Log retention to support forensic investigation if an incident does occur.
- DNS filtering to help prevent access to potentially malicious websites or sites you want to restrict.
- Threat intelligence to help you apply information about emerging cyberthreats to strengthen your defenses.
- Dark web monitoring to help identify any instances where your organization’s sensitive information may have been compromised.
- Regular vulnerability scanning to help your team proactively detect and address potential entry points before attackers can exploit them.
- Quarterly firewall configuration reviews to maintain strong defenses and align firewall rules with current security policies and business needs.
With the right SecOps practices in place, you can minimize risk, reduce incident response time and maintain business continuity.
Pillar 2: Governance
Strong cybersecurity programs are built on a foundation of governance and effective leadership.
Governance is crucial to understanding your risks and implementing the appropriate strategies to address them. Additionally, a chief information security officer (CISO) can provide the leadership you need to help oversee the program, communicate with stakeholders and embed cybersecurity into culture and operations.
As part of strong governance, your cybersecurity program should include:
- Annual cybersecurity program assessments to help ensure your program aligns with organizational objectives, regulatory requirements and best practices.
- Annual tabletop exercises that help you rehearse and strengthen staff’s incident response.
- Annual board security awareness sessions where your CISO educates leadership on cybersecurity risks, strategies and responsibilities.
- Quarterly employee training so that staff are aware of cyberthreats and equipped to defend against them.
Pillar 3: Cybersecurity testing
Cybersecurity testing is your opportunity to evaluate your program’s effectiveness, with assessments and simulated attacks that can help identify any vulnerabilities, misconfigurations or weaknesses.
Your cybersecurity program should include annual testing activities such as:
- Penetration testing, including internal tests to assess how far an attacker could go after gaining initial access, and external testing to identify vulnerabilities in perimeter defenses.
- Comprehensive vulnerability assessments that identify, classify and prioritize security weaknesses across your organization’s entire IT environment.
- Cloud security reviews that provide a structured evaluation of your cloud environment to help ensure data, applications and services are properly secure.
- Social engineering tests, including phishing and pretext-calling attacks, to assess how staff recognize and respond to cybercriminals’ manipulation tactics.
- Ransomware attack simulations to test your organization’s ability to identify and respond to ransomware incidents.
How to improve your program management
The real strength of a cybersecurity program comes from implementing all three pillars in a coordinated and continuous way. However, implementing all three doesn’t necessarily mean a full-scale overhaul of your organization’s security posture.
In many cases, organizations already practice key elements of cybersecurity and only need to address gaps in a few key areas. For example, you might already have strong governance and SecOps but lack a formal testing strategy. And most components of a cybersecurity program can be outsourced, including testing, SecOps functions and even CISO leadership, so your organization doesn’t have to navigate the complexity of performing those functions in-house.
The key is to recognize where the gaps are and take steps to close them so that all three pillars work together to build a resilient, well-rounded security posture.
How Wipfli can help
Looking for a comprehensive solution to your cybersecurity needs? Wipfli provides holistic services that can help you implement and manage a more effective cybersecurity program, from daily SecOps and testing to a virtual CISO. Reach out to our cybersecurity services team today to start transforming your defenses.
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