Managing cybersecurity for an organization today is both very challenging and very rewarding. Twenty years ago, cybersecurity specialists were not given the recognition they deserved by enterprise organizations, and that has changed in modern times. Cybersecurity attacks are very real and growing as a problem at an alarming pace, and failing to manage cybersecurity means a lot of organizational financial pain.
It can be rewarding to a cybersecurity professional when they are the last hope for an organization dealing with cybersecurity attacks in real-time, and the professional has the requisite skills to save the day. Anyone who has been a hero in the world of cybersecurity knows what we are talking about.
However, the challenging part lies in the work a professional has to do to prevent organizational attacks and maintain a hedge of protection that constantly shifts as the attackers become more sophisticated. The financial resources to fund cybersecurity practices are often generous and adequate when reacting to successful attacks but tend to quickly become a lower priority when the company is in security maintenance mode without a specific threat.
We briefly touched on this subject in a previous posting titled “Your Cybersecurity Risk Starts Inside” (https://www.arcticsecurity.com/resources/your-cybersecurity-risk-starts-inside), where I spoke of the importance of genuinely empowering your cybersecurity staff. This can mean many things depending on the size of your organization. One crucial issue is the budget. Smaller organizations are constantly struggling with budgets. Of course, this does not mean that it is easy for larger organizations to get what they need when they need it when it comes to cybersecurity.
Small vendors aiming to supply large enterprises with cybersecurity products and services often face a lengthy approval process, which can be frustrating for the vendors and the enterprise's cybersecurity professionals. This is where creative procurement solutions come into play. It becomes much simpler for the cybersecurity provider to partner with an already approved vendor that can deliver the company's products and services. The more prominent, approved vendor then oversees the engagement.
This is quite common with large consulting firms, such as our partner PWC Austria, which offers our early warning service to their clients and complements our service by providing in-house cybersecurity expertise and assistance to customers to fix the issues found. In such circumstances, the enterprise purchases the third-party product or service through the approved provider, eliminating the need to go through the lengthy approval process and getting additional benefits.
Sometimes, procurement challenges can also be overcome by having a pre-approved vendor for distribution, such as the Microsoft Azure marketplace. Arctic EWS is also available there, if that makes procuring the service easier.
So why is this important? An enterprise cybersecurity professional is often aware of specific needs that smaller companies can provide and may need them in a hurry. Sometimes, you just need to get creative to get what you need.