As budgets tighten and teams shrink, cybersecurity leaders will be facing an impossible challenge: how to accomplish more with fewer resources.
    
To make matters worse, business executives often (mistakenly) view cybersecurity as a luxury, setting it up as a prime target for any cost-cutting measures.

As we head into a financial downturn, here are five ways that CISOs can maintain momentum despite a scarcity of talent and resources.

1. Consolidation

An effective way to reduce costs without sacrificing performance is by consolidating software licenses around single vendors. Businesses often purchase applications piecemeal in order to solve individual challenges, but this usually translates into a higher bottom-line price tag. A recession can be a good opportunity to review your technology stack and identify key partners who can support multiple initiatives, including business applications, information technology and security infrastructure.

For example, it's often possible to consolidate email and endpoint protection, data encryption, and firewalls within a single vendor. While you may end up sacrificing some of your favorite tools, you'll lock in bulk discounts, reduce your attack surface and increase operational efficiencies. By making it easier to manage your toolset, you'll gain additional time, money, and resources to spend on other projects.

Silent Breach offers free software reviews. Schedule a call with one our security experts.

2. Automation

Many organizations continue to struggle with digital transformation and creating an automation pipeline. Key industries such as energy and construction still have some distance to go in replacing manual bottlenecks with digital power, and this will be a major source of growth for those organizations that take the leap.

Change often occurs under pressure, and a market shift is the perfect way to generate corporate buy-in for major cost-cutting initiatives.

For example, Quantum Armor is a fully agentless solution which combines continuous monitoring, cloud auditing, threat intelligence, and mitigation planning into a single platform, and costs less than most entry-level engineers.

3. Focus on Defense

The optimism and cash flow generated during a growth market is perfect for the kinds of risky investments that create offensive advantages. A downturn, however, is a good opportunity to return to basics and focus on defense. Time and again, security awareness training has proven to be one of the most cost-effective strategies to reduce cybersecurity risks and mitigate any potential fallout.

The fact is that an organization's people (rather than its technology) are its most vulnerable resource, and social engineering attacks are responsible for 80% of all successful cyberattacks.

Schedule a phishing simulation today, and receive real-life data on your most vulnerable risks.

4. Trust your talent

As budgets gets slashed, layoffs and hiring freezes are often a part of the package. It's important, then, that you keep your top talent close and provide them with everything they need to pursue success.

Having the right people on the core security team is more important than ever because you'll have to rely on them even more. Members of the core security team need to have a risk/reward frame of mind and an exceptional set of skills.

This will have the added benefit of freeing up any additional staff to focus on proactive efforts or be re-assigned to open roles.

5. Talk the Talk

CISOs are both the newest C-level executives and the least understood. The majority of CISOs report that their corporate boards are not actively involved in security operations. To combat this silo effect, current CISOs should use board meetings as an opportunity to build bridges between their own work and the rest of the board.

The ability of CISOs to translate technical issues into business jargon, such as Risk Appetite Statements, will be crucial to navigating the months and years ahead. In many ways, it will be cultural adjustments such as these that will provide the sorely needed expenditure increases across cybersecurity.

For organizations which lack a dedicated CISO, partnering with a vCISO can be an extremely productive and cost-effective alternative.

Learn more about how Quantum Armor can help you stay safe for less. Sign up for a 30-day free trial and test-drive our platform 100% risk-free!

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