Critical infrastructure protection and its role in resilient enterprise cyber security

93% of the total data present in your organization's data centres can likely be breached by cybercriminals. This means that 93% of the time, someone from outside your network could get past your defenses and use your local network resources. 

What can possibly go wrong? If your firm loses data or has intellectual property stolen, it fails to comply with regulations and might face a significant non-compliance penalty. 

Interestingly, just half of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) actually have an incident response plan to protect their IT systems.  

This blog explores how critical infrastructure protection and infrastructure security work together to safeguard the privacy, cybersecurity, reliability, and accuracy of your data – all essential pillars for a business's long-term success and growth.  

What are the three types of critical infrastructure protection? 

Digital technologies, digital experiences, and digital security are the elements that propel our modern digital world. When it comes to the security of servers, networks, and IT workloads, businesses nowadays rely heavily on data-driven decision-making. As more devices connect to your business networks, more of your company's intellectual property will be accessible through public networks. 

The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is responsible for investing in a comprehensive critical infrastructure protection plan. This plan will safeguard the organization against physical and cyber-attacks across all critical areas, including on-premises data centres, cybersecurity systems, cloud-native infrastructures, and user terminals.  

What are the three types of critical infrastructure security? 

Security and risk management (SRM) executives agree that three main elements of an organization's IT infrastructure must be in place for it to operate effectively. These components include securely managing your critical endpoints, future-proofing your organizational networks, and creating a robust Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) delivery model for secure-cloud native operations. 

Let's have a look at these three types of infrastructure security in detail.  

• Endpoint Security  

Protecting computer networks that are virtually connected to end-user devices is an important aspect of securing your business infrastructure. On the other hand, your critical corporate data, as it travels across various endpoints, is a business asset for your organization's security leadership. This means they must develop policies and strategies that are in line with their business integrity goals.  

Simply put, an endpoint is any external device that makes a connection to your internal business and exchanges data in return. To ensure foolproof endpoint security, you can develop a strategic endpoint detection and response (EDR) strategy that helps you protect vital information and ensure that it is being accessed by authorized entities.  

• Network Security   

What industry practices can we adopt to modernize our company's network security? How can we transition our existing security tools to a cloud-native infrastructure? What policies and procedures can we develop to provide authorization to devices accessing business data over public networks?   

As a CISO, you might think about these questions quite often. But how exactly do you plan on optimizing your critical infrastructure protection management? An effective solution would be to conduct regular evaluations, practice accountability, and make sure IT security standards are enforced at the ground level. The first line of defence in protecting your IT infrastructure should be to use state-of-the-art security architectural paradigms when implementing network infrastructure security.  

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

What do you think when someone tells you to include a cloud computing architecture as part of your IT security strategy?   

If you haven't experienced what a cloud-based solution looks like, it might seem like a daunting task at first. As complicated and risky as it may sound, all you need to do is take the right approach and avoid common implementation mistakes when integrating infrastructure security in your cloud computing architecture.  

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud computing service architecture that can help you enable enhanced security operations in the cloud, which can provide you with better insight into your cloud-based workloads.  

Building a robust security infrastructure  

There are five key tiers to consider for robust infrastructure protection: data security, cybersecurity, application security, network security, and physical security. Building a resilient IT organization requires a holistic approach, ensuring not just network defence against external threats and software updates, but also the vital tasks of data protection, creating disaster recovery plans, and maintaining application security.    

Seeking an integrated IT security solution that can self-repair, monitor, and enhance itself? Explore our information security and compliance services or get in touch with us here!