Everything is going digital. This is one of the unchanging truths today.
From communication down to everyday commute, there is a software or mobile application for it. Stopping your business to go digital is similar to hindering your enterprise from progressing forward. You must undergo a digital transformation.
What is Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the reimagination of current businesses. As the name suggests, it digitizes every nook and cranny of the business plan. We see retail services that no longer have brick-and-mortar stores. Instead, they are investing more in their eCommerce webshops and mobile app stores.
Let’s take global leader Amazon as an example. All transactions with Amazon are done online. Whether you partner with them as a Seller or become an occasional customer, all details are exchanged back and forth online. Even the payment methods are also digital. A fully digitally transformed business doesn’t rely on stacks upon stacks of documents. What they need are a powerful processor and ample cloud storage.
Further on, digital transformation means migrating all your data to a secured cloud online and processing all your business there. This migration also means that all sensitive and confidential data are susceptible to cybersecurity attacks from unknown entities.
With a certain degree of vulnerability, you can’t let others take advantage and compromise what you’ve worked hard for. This is one of the reasons why you need to come up with a comprehensive Cybersecurity plan.
Complete Guide to Cybersecurity Plans
A cybersecurity plan is one of the many security layers that protect your data online from any form of cyber attack. Despite investing in proxy walls, servers, and other security subscriptions, all of these investments become a waste of time when you don’t have an overarching plan to maximize their use.
The main goal of creating one is to protect the integrity of company processes and assets. In order to serve its purpose, you must have a comprehensive plan. Let’s see how this plan aids digital transformation.
Why Digital Transformation Needs a Cybersecurity Plan
There are several reasons why the entire process of digital transformation needs a well-laid-out cybersecurity plan.
Here are some of its significant points.
Wall Against Cyber Attacks
The internet isn’t a gated community, and even gated communities get external threats all the time. A well-written cybersecurity plan acts as the gate that surrounds your environment from unprecedented dangers.
It is an added wall against all forms of breach, whether internal or external. A fully comprehensive one must have measures and plans against internal and external attacks. More than that, measures for cybersecurity aren’t foolproof. Investing in just tools or software systems will not be enough for complex attacks. Creative countermeasures prepared in the plan will be the final line of defense.
Digital Everything
Businesses aren’t the only ones that are turning digital. Consumers’ preferences are also changing, and the convenience that comes with digital means is godsent. Thus, more services are upping their game in going digital.
Service providers are not the only ones who are boosting their digital strategies. Hackers and cyber terrorists are also on the lookout for new methods to breach confidential data and compromise millions of sensitive data.
As such, cybersecurity becomes one of the foundations that pull together the digital society. Once you go digital, you need a security net that will safely keep all your existing data. This plan will also shield your company’s integrity from bouts of cyber terrorism.
If you are yet to start drafting your cybersecurity plan, here are some points that you need to note.
How to Create a Comprehensive Cybersecurity Plan
1. Evaluate Current Situation
Before you even start drafting the plan, conduct a thorough analysis of your current condition first. In this analysis, make sure you cover everything from your operational processes down to customer service SOPs.
This process provides you with several necessary feedback, such as which processes can be digitized immediately and which ones require software and external tools. In the strictest sense, this careful evaluation helps in laying down the data for logistics.
Additionally, another feedback that will be crucial in creating this plan is the gap between the current and ideal situation. This data is critical for coming up with actionable strategies later on.
2. Assess Possible Risks and Threats
Next off, this step is undoubtedly the most critical part of this entire process. Determine, single out, and assess the possible cyber risks and threats.
Say, for example, a large chunk of your financial data needs to be migrated online. A crucial part of the assessment tells you how you should go about the data transfer. Are there fewer risks if you do it in one go, or are there more? This assessment also provides you with the answer to which ICS security vendor you can partner with.
Choosing the perfect ICS provider is a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. ICS or industrial control system security providers are responsible for the safekeeping and securing of the security systems in place. They can also assess your current measures and update them accordingly.
3. Take Note of Existing Cybersecurity Rules
It also goes without saying that you need to take note of your business’s current cybersecurity measures.
In this process, don’t just take notice of these rules. Evaluate each one and determine if they have been effective wards against any forms of security and data breach. If they are, further assess if these rules can be improved and streamlined for a fully digitized business.
If they weren’t effective in any way, scrap them or revise them to fit with the new system.
4. Set Achievable and Time Bound Goals
Now that you have a better grasp of how your business is doing cyber security-wise, it’s time to draft some actionable plans that go better together with the digital transformation.
It is important to note that creating these goals shouldn’t be done just for its sake. There should be an emphasis on creating achievable and time bound goals to measure the progress of the company accurately.
5. Familiarize With Related Laws
Lastly, to serve as the framework of your plan, brush up on existing cybersecurity laws. These current laws will help streamline what you need to include in your project. Including law provisions in your company’s cybersecurity plan will cement the authority of said document.
It will also help penalize attacks and breaches accordingly. If a certain violation is subject to years of incarceration, your HR team can prepare the necessary actions to push through the punishment.
At most, familiarizing with these laws will minimize the loopholes of your plan. It will provide a better grasp of possible threats and how to measure the violations and penalize them accordingly.
Final Words
Digital transformation bridges the present with the future. As everything continues to transform digitally, it is just right to have a safety net that will shield this process from threats. Cyber terrorism and attacks are, admittedly, something unprecedented. They often come as a surprise, so the best thing to do is to be fully prepared for the possible countermeasures.
Cybersecurity plans are these countermeasures. Make sure that your plan is a substantial safety net and not one with holes and scratches.
