With online networks being a mandatory aspect of running a business nowadays, almost every company in the world has created some form of online presence on the internet. As much as the internet has changed the way we do business for the better, it has introduced numerous risks that, unfortunately, come with enormous consequences. One of the largest risks of online networks and systems are cybersecurity threats, which have become more common than ever before.
Our responses to these cybersecurity risks are different security measures and regulations that can be found within the NIST cybersecurity framework. This framework, although not required by the law, is highly recommended to businesses in all industries around the world. The NIST framework is basically a collection of security measures that, when combined, can protect your business from the common cybercrime threats. We already know that complying to the framework is highly recommended, but the question we want to answer here is whether businesses need to take things a step further and invest into NIST risk assessment tools.
There are quite a few useful NIST tools available to business owners and security teams who want to fully comply to the NIST framework. Most simply put, the NIST tools make compliance to the framework far simpler and easier to understand. A risk assessment tool is essentially an advanced software that helps manage your security infrastructure, inform you of potential threats and tasks that need to be done, as well as identify and assess any form of potential risk.
With data breaches being way too common these days, business teams ought to be more careful when implementing security measures and the regulations of this framework. On the other hand, a software that assesses risks and identifies threats is often far more accurate than humans can ever be. After all, a software can easily spot something that the human eye might have missed.
In other words, using automated NIST tools can take your company’s security structure to the next level. These tools often include features such as automatic updates and notifications, and organizational assets. Furthermore, tools of this kind can help you determine your current security status, as well as create a clear goal as to what you want to achieve with the security team at your company.
Neither the risk assessment tools nor the NIST framework itself are in any way mandatory. However, both of these assets are extremely helpful when it comes to protecting your business from potential risks that might lead to complex cyberattacks and completely unexpected consequences. Therefore, we highly recommend complying to the NIST framework in 2019, as well as using an automated NIST framework tool to help you keep your compliance up to date. Thanks to assets such as these, we can now successfully manage and even reduce the cybersecurity risks of running a business in an online network, as well as fight off more hackers than we did in the previous year.