Millions of identities stolen. Credit card fraud at an all-time high. Trillions stolen from companies worldwide. Cyber hackers attacking with reckless abandon.
The cyber world has become an increasingly dangerous place while millions of people try to defend with minimal success. This all sounds like a bad Mad Max movie but it is the reality of our time.
The internet is a place where business is done for just about every company in the world. If a company is not online, they will most likely not make it. What should companies do today to combat cyber terrorism? An excellent question with a very difficult answer. Simply guarding the cyber walls is not the catch all it was just a short number of years ago. Companies must go deeper and protect their assets in multiple layers with sophisticated security solutions. The problem companies have is that to get to a basic level of security they must start with the simplest of solutions like adding firewalls or using anti-virus software. But where do they start? Another question but with a simpler answer.
The Cyber Security Assessment for Everyone
Companies are deluged with cyber security firms who want to do a FREE assessment of the needs while hopefully selling some software along the way. Government has also been struggling with this same problem and some have found a way to begin without the fear of being cajoled into a large purchase. Four counties, Livingston, Monroe, Oakland, Wayne and Washtenaw, worked with the State of Michigan to create a cyber security assessment that is simple yet comprehensive enough to lay the foundation to better security. The assessment is titled CySAFE or the Cyber Security Assessment for Everyone . CySAFE is built using Excel.
The data is only available to you or whomever you share the file with. This simple assessment utilizes the 20 Critical Controls, ISO 27001 and NIST by taking over 379 controls and boiling them down into 33. The 33 controls are evaluated over three key factors – cost to implement, time to implement and risk – and are assigned a number based on each key factor. The assessment can be taken in approximately one hour and it can yield an incredible vision into an organization’s cyber security needs. The output of the CySAFE assessment is a color coded priority list, radar graph and bar chart. CySAFE has the ability to trend progress over time which will help when communicating to senior leadership. CySAFE has been downloaded in all fifty states and has benefited everyone who has truly used it.
It is a well-known fact that medium to smaller sized governments have less expertise and human assets to wage the battle they must fight. It is also well-known that medium to smaller sized companies have the very same problem. For this reason, the CySAFE for Business was launched and can be found at www.advantageoakland.com.
Phil Bertolini, Oakland County Deputy Executive/CIO
Chris Burrows, Oakland County CISO
https://www.oakgov.com/advantageoakland/business/Pages/cysafe.aspx
