This blog was written by an independent guest blogger.
Cybersecurity is a leading concern for any business today. While this trend has made IT security a secure and potentially lucrative field, modern cybersecurity professionals also face growing challenges.
If you hope to keep your business safe amid rising threats, you’ll have to overcome these obstacles. In that spirit, here are seven of the top challenges in modern cybersecurity and how you can solve them.
1. Staffing shortages
As more businesses become aware of the need for cybersecurity, demand has risen, but there aren’t enough workers to meet it. A recent survey revealed that 61% of cybersecurity teams are understaffed. If you haven’t already, you may soon encounter difficulty finding enough talent to handle your increasing workload.
Specialty occupation visa programs may help you find talent internationally to help fill the gaps. Alternatively, you can turn to automation to artificially expand your workforce. By automating some tasks like network monitoring, you can accomplish more with fewer workers.
2. Skills gaps
The same survey found that 50% of teams say their applicants are underqualified. The labor shortage, along with increasingly complex cyberattacks, has created a growing skills gap. Even when companies can find potential workers, they may not find anyone with appropriate experience or skills.
You can fix this issue by cultivating talented workers instead of looking for them. Your seasoned employees can help train new hires, creating a skilled workforce out of less experienced candidates. Similarly, you can run internship programs that you then hire out of, creating a skilled worker pipeline.
3. Rising cybercrime
One of the more obvious challenges of modern cybersecurity is that cybercrime is becoming a more severe issue. On average, security breaches cost businesses $3.86 million in 2020. Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and damaging, and cybersecurity professionals must rise to the challenge.
Companies need to make cybersecurity a priority in both budget and operations amid these rising threats. Cybersecurity professionals should also be more vigilant than ever, scrutinizing activity more closely and thoroughly. Zero-trust networks may be a necessity to manage the sheer volume of attacks some companies see.
4. Remote worker security
Securing today’s increasingly distributed workforce can be a challenge. Many tools that remote workers rely on come with new vulnerabilities. For instance, Amazon Cloud Drive does not offer at-rest encryption, and Zoom has notorious security flaws. Managing people on different networks on potentially unsecured devices is rarely straightforward, too.
Thankfully, there’s a growing number of remote monitoring platforms you can use to watch remote workers’ traffic. Stricter access controls like two-factor authentication can prevent criminals posing as remote workers from getting into a system. Segmenting your network can further secure remote access and mitigate the impact of a breach.
5. Growing attack surfaces
As businesses adopt more connected technologies, network attack surfaces grow. Rising IoT adoption has made companies more agile and transparent, but they also create cybersecurity vulnerabilities. IT security professionals now have more entry points to manage, which can be challenging.
One of the best ways to secure new potential entry points is network segmentation. Every device should only have access to the parts of the network it needs to function. You may even consider hosting some devices on an entirely separate Wi-Fi network to stop them from becoming back doors.
6. Uneven regulations
Now that cybercrime has become more prominent, authorities have taken notice. Many jurisdictions now have legal cybersecurity regulations, but these vary between areas. This uneven regulatory landscape can make it difficult to know what’s permissible and what isn’t for a more distributed company.
As cybersecurity concerns grow, regulatory policies will become more even. Until then, the safest option is to abide by the strictest code between everything that may be applicable. Err on the side of transparency and tighter security controls instead of seeing how loose your protocols can be.
7. Lack of Cybersecurity knowledge
Despite cybercrime’s rise, many users still don’t exhibit much understanding of safe IT practices. For example, although 59% of internet users believe their accounts are safer than average, 65% reuse passwords across multiple accounts. As cyberattacks become more common, this lack of knowledge can lead to damaging breaches due to human error.
Thankfully, the resolution to this issue is fairly straightforward. Requiring basic cybersecurity training for all employees, not just IT workers, can help fight the dangers of ignorance. Holding regular refresher courses to ensure no one forgets any best practices is also recommended.
Cybersecurity landscape is always shifting
Cybersecurity is a dynamic field. Challenges will always rise, fall, and shift, and professionals need to stay on top of these changes to stay safe. If you can overcome these seven challenges, you can ensure a higher degree of security than many companies today.
