Why Must Federal Agencies Shift from a Reactive to a Proactive Security Approach?
Federal agencies and DoD contractors are not an exception to the cybersecurity community’s collective hand being forced to go on the offensive by contemporary threat actors and the state of the threat environment. Cyber attackers will choose the easiest route as they get more skilled at spotting and abusing infrastructure flaws. As a result, agencies with overall security beyond conventional cyber defenses will be targeted even though they are lower on the shortlist of attack targets.
DoD contractors need to be proactive in securing their perimeter and setting up road spikes to block their advance in the game of cybersecurity.
Why There is a High Risk of Cyberattacks Against Federal Agencies
A study of government cybersecurity leaders found that 75% of respondents believed their high-value assets might have been compromised in the previous year. Attackers may target Federal objectives for a variety of reasons. One is that there is no lack of confidential information in the government sector. Cybercriminals will go to almost any means to obtain it. The destruction of any aspect of the government is something that evil actors proudly wear as a badge of honor, which is another consideration.
Additionally, the pains of a relatively abrupt security growth surge that has transpired over the past few years have undermined federal cybersecurity. In fact, “nefarious Nation-state entities have seldom sprung into action the way they did over the preceding 12 months,” according to the 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. Threat environments have rapidly widened. Every agency must deal with an ever-expanding attack surface as network perimeters extend, team members have dispersed farther apart, and IOT keeps growing. In addition, innovation itself will not be confined as new advancements like edge computing, 5G, and the Cloud strain the capabilities of old agency infrastructure.
Rising risk levels, threat information, and increasingly sophisticated assaults force leaders to review current cybersecurity procedures and impose new compliance standards and executive directives. Expanding knowledge and skill sets means keeping up with this innovation.
One such requirement that follows in the footsteps of heightened cyber attack activities, which have skyrocketed in recent years, is Executive Order 14028’s requirement for zero trust. It pushes open the door to aggressive or defensive security solutions that go above reactive approaches because basic security must be firmly secured before Zero Trust can ever be considered. This entails identifying and resolving vulnerabilities in an agency’s networks and services that have not yet been identified or used maliciously.
A multi-layer strategy is required to herd all the cats when there are so many siloed networks and endpoints going amok. Agencies need to make genuinely concentrated attempts to preemptively discover their vulnerabilities if they are to set the stage for Zero Trust or even the first few steps in that direction. By using strategies like adversary simulation and penetration testing, you may think like an attacker and anticipate their moves. Agencies must also use effective remediation management techniques to ensure that only the flaws that actually constitute a risk are fixed and that no resources are lost due to poor prioritizing or busy work.
Aim Towards Security Maturity
A frequently used word that might be in danger of losing its extremely significant significance is “advancing security maturity.” DoD companies should seek a robust security paradigm after, not as a task to cross off a list, but rather for the exceptional protection it may offer. To secure your organization before, throughout, and after an attack, your security program must be comprehensive and contain preventative and reactive measures. This is known as security maturity. Unfortunately, the development of cybersecurity appears to have gone against the attack cycle. Many businesses have started developing their strategies with an eye on what to do after an attack rather than how to avoid one in the first place.
