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Invictus
Invictus Insights October 02, 2018

A Cybersecure Cultural Mindset

By: Nathaniel Wade

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month where the Department of Homeland Security and private sector partners work together to raise awareness about cyber threats in our personal and professional lives. After all, cybersecurity is a shared responsibility and in the cyber ecosystem our security is dependent on all stakeholders taking an active role.

A pervasive cultural mindset that cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility highlights the true measure of an organization’s cybersecurity program maturation and success potential. Global markets are moving at the speed of business and must be culturally cyber-focused and cyber-capable to ensure critical assets and information is protected. Information availability, emerging technologies, and attack tactics, tools, and procedures (TTP) proliferation are contributing forces rapidly changing the cyber domain. This accelerating change requires cybersecurity practitioners and adjacent disciplines to proportionally increase their relevant hard skills and awareness to effectively protect commerce and national security.

A risk byproduct of the fast-moving information age is that an immense amount of sensitive data being generated, collected, stored, and transmitted is often vulnerable to exposure and illicit disclosure from both external and internal actors. Data brokering is big business, and not just for legitimate entities but for nation states and organized crime. The more information that is insecurely collected and aggregated over time creates appealing and susceptible attack targets to threat actors with intent to maximize the return on their exploit investments. An organizations’ culture is best achieved by an “all hands on deck” approach. This serves as a force multiplier to maximize cyber assets by amplifying the operational benefits of administrative and technical security control measures.

Invictus International is committed to our valued customers and business partners by proactively infusing cybersecurity at the moment of engagement. This fundamental tenant is a priority and pervasive cultural mindset of all Invictus employees. A baked-in approach vice retroactively engineering security countermeasures is the cost-effective and assured approach to business and national security resiliency. Implementing this approach with our clients has resulted in reduced authority to operate (ATO) times, cost savings, and improved network security.

Ensuring a real time plan leverages new technologies and aligns to business objectives is critical not only to survival but dominance in cyberspace. A pervasive, security minded culture ensures a persistent ready state for real time responsiveness and a proactive security posture that places adversaries in a persistent reactive state.