Renewing Your Security Vendor Contract? Know When It’s the Time to Switch

Introduction

With the changing digital business landscape, organizations are more concerned about their security infrastructure than ever.

Whether incorporating technology or modern tools into online platforms or invoking the true potential of firewalls, everyone is geared up for unpredictable threats.

While some businesses rely on in-house security practices, others mostly choose third-party vendors to offer better shielding against cyber threats.

Though outsourcing your cybersecurity could be the best decision from an information security perspective, knowing when to renew or alter the same makes all the difference.

However, businesses aren’t sure whether they’re protecting their organization’s sensitive information, employees’ details, and customer data against the latest threats or not.

Since cybercriminals are constantly exploring new ways to exploit sensitive business and customer information, companies must upgrade their security infrastructure to ensure they remain in a safe zone.

Let’s look at some aspects of upgrading your security practices and when businesses must rethink their cybersecurity posture.

What’s Considered a Good Cybersecurity Hygiene?

Cyber hygiene, also known as cybersecurity hygiene, can be defined as the set of specific practices that organizations regularly perform to maintain the security of their customers and employees.

The main goal of cybersecurity hygiene is to ensure robust safety for sensitive data and protect it from cyber-attacks.

Brands collecting heaps of customer data rely on third-party cybersecurity mechanisms to ensure that crucial information isn’t compromised or unauthorized professionals don’t sneak into their network.

And these cybersecurity best practices mainly include multi-factor authentication (MFA), which helps provide seamless and secure authentication.

But besides endless security mechanisms working simultaneously to prevent a breach, some cybercriminals may even bypass unsafe levels of defense.

Hence, when organizations face violations, they must consider switching their security vendor or renewing the same with added security features.

Signs You Need to Switch/Renew Your Security Vendor Contract

Though organizations should frequently conduct cybersecurity assessments to find and trace any vulnerabilities, some early signs may indicate that organizations must rethink their cybersecurity hygiene.

Here’s the list of early characteristics that portray your organization's needs to renew your cybersecurity vendor contract:

#1. You’re growing your footprint by incorporating new systems.

Relying on conventional security mechanisms could be risky if you’re planning to expand since a little loophole in planning and managing new things could be fatal.

Most of the time, businesses aren’t focussing on sensitive areas and are highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. And the conventional security approaches aren’t potent to prevent a breach.

For instance, multi-factor authentication isn’t adequate to help businesses overcome the challenges in high-risk situations—here is where the role of risk-based authentication (RBA) comes into play.

Risk-based authentication is a method of applying various levels of stringency to authentication processes based on the likelihood that access to a given system could result in compromised. As the level of risk increases, authentication becomes more restrictive.

#2. Your customers/employees are being frequently phished.

If your employees/users are continuously being attacked by phishing emails or messages, it’s time to reinvent your cybersecurity hygiene.

Phishing attacks aren’t uncommon. However, these attacks can cause reputational and financial damage to organizations, and businesses may lose millions of dollars.

If you’re receiving complaints regarding your employees/customers frequently being attacked by phishing emails, it’s time to invoke the true potential of a robust cybersecurity mechanism.

#3. You’re detecting unusual system/network activity.

Sometimes, cybercriminals may try to penetrate a system, and your IT team may notice some unusual activities.

However, most of the time, IT staff within an organization or third-party IT security vendors usually ignore these activities. And here’s where they may end up compromising their sensitive business information.

Modern tools and technologies are potent for detecting sneaking at earlier phases; hence businesses can mitigate the risks. Also, a reliable security mechanism could help enterprises to early see any breach and, therefore, can help in containing the same at the earliest.

In Conclusion

Technology has provided endless opportunities to enterprises. However, adopting technology entirely doesn’t mean that underlying risks could be overlooked.

Companies need to understand that they may need to change their cybersecurity policies or rely on third-party vendors to ensure the highest level of security.