The Cyber Defense eMagazine February Edition for 2024

Perhaps the most obvious example of the impact of cyber security activities on business operations is
the area of vulnerability remediation. In typical organizations, the cyber security team identifies
vulnerabilities and passes that information along to the IT team to patch the vulnerable devices, a process
that might make sense on paper, but can generate understandable conflict in reality. Those two groups
(Security and IT) have markedly different objectives. The cyber security team obviously is responsible
for protecting the organization from cyber attack, while IT operators are driven by systems availability
and corporate productivity. And, as anyone in IT knows all too well, patches can break stuff. It goes
without saying that, although system failures resulting from disruptive patches are much more rare today
than, say, 20 years ago, IT operators are understandably apprehensive about playing Russian Roulette
with their networks, and by extension, their careers.
There are countless other examples of productivity-impacting security requirements that span the
spectrum from annoyance (changing passwords) to policies with serious impacts on productivity
(extensive 3rd party screening that can delay hiring critical vendors for months), and all of them are
created with good intentions by security professionals with the best interest of the organization - or
regulatory compliance - at heart. So how do security teams minimize operational risk and burden while
still protecting the organization?
The key to healthy, but not overbearing, cyber security is first a genuine recognition that all security is
about managing risk, and that yet more tools and policies are not always a good thing. Security
practitioners have to cultivate an appreciation for the impact their policies have on everyone in the
organization, and that security is about managing risk, not a futile effort to reduce it to zero. In the case
of cyber security, less may just be more.
That appreciation, and the policies and activities that flow from it should start with a recognition that just
about all cyber attacks originate from one of three techniques in today’s threat landscape:
• Stolen credentials
• Phishing
• Un-remediated vulnerabilities
This reality should inform the decisions made by the cyber security team. From concept to
implementation, the question should be asked constantly: will this policy or product materially reduce the
organization’s exposure to an attack initiated by stolen credentials, phishing, or unpatched
vulnerabilities? A companion question should add whether or not the new policy/tool will limit the attack’s
severity if it’s successful. If the answer is not an obvious yes, the security team should reconsider the
approach, especially if it has any discernible impact on operations.
Doctors’ offices and government agencies are legendary for developing forms that require obviously
unnecessary - or redundant - information from patients and citizens, the motivation for which it seems is
simply because they can, and they’re utterly unconcerned with the experience, time, or frustration of their
constituents. We’ve all been in organizations in which it seemed the security team’s policies were similarly
developed with a wanton disregard for the experience or operational needs of the organization’s
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