Roadmap For A Security And Resiliency Program

After trying several approaches, I found the following simple(ish) and scalable roadmap to be a good way to establish a foundational and stable security program with a focus on security resiliency. The roadmap includes four strategic phases, each focusing on building strong foundations, enhancing capabilities, and ensuring adaptability.

Remember, stagnant equals death, so even when you think you have a stable foundation and an ongoing program, revisit, assess, and change as needed. That's the critical component of a good resilient security program.

Timeline and Phase Summary

Times are best cases. Adjust as needed.

1. Assessment Phase: 0–6 Months - Baseline security and building an IR foundation
2. Enhancement Phase: 6–12 Months - Improving visibility and operational control
3. Proactive Defense Phase: 12–24 Months - Advanced defenses and adaptability
4. Continuous Improvement Phase: 24+ Months - Innovation and creation of a security culture

Phases In Depth

Phase 1: Assessment and Foundational Security (0–6 Months)

Goal: Establish a baseline and build the groundwork for an incident response program.

1. Assess Current State:

• Perform a comprehensive risk assessment.
• Identify critical assets, business processes, and threat vectors.
• Evaluate current security controls and existing gaps.

2. Define Security Resiliency Objectives:

• Establish recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO).
• Align with business goals and compliance requirements.
• Learn from past incidents and issues where recovery may have failed.

3. Develop a Resiliency Framework:

• Adopt industry standards like NIST CSF or the CIS Controls.
• Define metrics to measure security resilience (e.g., time to detect/respond).
• Create dashboards and reports that expose those metrics.
• Create tests that periodically measure the metrics.

4. Strengthen Incident Response (IR) Capability:

• Establish or refine an Incident Response Plan.
• Socialize the plan to all stakeholders.
• Form an incident response team and conduct initial training.
• (Later: Periodically train and exercise the IR Capability.)

5. Implement Basic Hygiene:

• Patch critical vulnerabilities and enforce strong identity/access controls.
• Ensure regular backups and test their reliability.
• Educate the whole of the company on what’s needed to support a resiliency program on an ongoing basis.

Phase 2: Enhance Visibility and Detective Controls (6–12 Months)

Goal: Build detection capabilities and improve control mechanisms.

1. Enhance Monitoring:

• Deploy or upgrade a centralized Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system.
• Integrate logging from all critical systems and applications.

2. Automate Threat Detection:

• Automate basic detection and response actions.
• Use behavioral analytics to detect anomalies.
• Enhance the IR team capabilities with basic use of AI for detection of anomalies.

3. Improve Access Management:

• Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) across the organization.
• Adopt a Zero Trust model by continuously validating user and device identities.

4. Establish Redundancy:

• Set up failover systems for critical infrastructure.
• Ensure geo-redundancy for data and applications when relevant.

5. Develop Contingency Plans:

• Create business continuity and disaster recovery plans (BC/DR).
• Create a Crisis Management Plan for critical incidents such as ransomware, complete denial of service, etc.
• Conduct tabletop exercises to validate these plans.

Phase 3: Proactive Defense and Controls Adaptability (12–24 Months)

Goal: Build advanced defenses and prepare for emerging threats.

1. Conduct Regular Testing:

• Schedule ongoing vulnerability assessments and penetration tests.
• Perform a red team exercises to identify weaknesses.
• Conduct and red vs blue exercise at least once a year to test defense capabilities.

2. Collect Threat Intelligence:

• Use real-time threat feeds to anticipate and block emerging threats.
• Integrate threat intelligence into security operations.

3. Integrate "Chaos Security Engineering":

• Simulate controlled failures to test system resilience.
• Refine processes based on results.

4. Expand Security Training:

• Conduct organization-wide security awareness advanced training.
• Provide more advanced training for the security team.

5. Focus On Vendor and Supply Chain Security:

• Assess third-party risks and enforce security standards.
• Establish clear security requirements in vendor contracts.

Phase 4: Continuous Improvement, Innovation, and Modernization (24+ Months)

Goal: Establish a culture of security and resilience, and continuous adaptation.

1. Foster a Security-First Culture:

• Integrate security into business decisions and daily operations.
• Encourage open communication and collaboration on security.

2. Leverage Emerging Technologies:

• Further explore AI for enhanced threat detection.

3. Measure and Optimize:

• Regularly review resiliency metrics and KPIs.
• Iterate on strategies based on evolving risks and lessons learned.

4. Participate in Information Sharing:

• Join industry-specific information-sharing organizations (eg. ISACs).
• Share threat intelligence and collaborate on collective defenses.

5. Prepare for the Future:

• Continuously monitor the regulatory and compliance landscapes.
• Plan for challenges like post quantum computing threats or AI-driven attacks.