Every year, we hear about the Chinese New Year, the animal featured that year, and its significance.
With the start of the new school year, I would like to declare the 2024-2025 school year “The Year of Visibility.”
I challenge you to dedicate yourself to making this the year you truly progress in seeing your entire network.
That means being able to:
- See what is actually on your *entire* network - NIST CSF Identify
- Understand your entire network security posture end to end at any time - NIST CSF Detect and Protect
- Have a coherent and consistent patch strategy that includes OS, third-party applications, IoT devices, switches, firewalls, and management cards. - NIST CSF Protect
- Solve your gaps in visibility during the hacker's prime working hours - nights, weekends, and holidays. - NIST CSF Identify, Detect, and Respond
I realize this list, for many, is a very challenging list.
However, this isn't an optional list. You must figure out how to get this done.
Having your favorite antivirus or EDR tool deployed is no longer enough to keep you safe.
Having the low-end version of your favorite antivirus and EDR tool will no longer keep you safe.
Everything can be hacked. At some point, an attacker will find a crack in your armor and enter your network. It is estimated that you have 4 minutes to kill the incursion, and once a foothold is established, you have hours at best to prevent destruction.
How are you going to defend against that with your present systems?
We need to talk if you don't have a good answer to my question.
In the meantime, you have whatever you have. I need you to be relentless and obsess over leveraging everything you presently have to protect your network and endpoints. You need to be obsessive about processes and know what is always going on. You have to figure out how to sustain that effort year-round.
My head hurts thinking about how much work that is.
However, I don't want to read your name in the paper and have your district devastated.
I firmly believe that CSI’s Security Operations Center (SOC) services, which provide 24x7x3765 visibility and oversight, are the only way forward. CSI has both proactive and reactive SOC services to meet most budgets.
This must be done. No exceptions.
Your district’s network security will increasingly depend on your decisions to solve your critical visibility gaps this year.
Please get in touch with Lisa so we can start the conversation about getting you to where you must be to keep your district safe.
-Scott Quimby, CISSP
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