Are You Secure? The Cybersecurity Metrics You Need to Know

Staying current with the latest technology trends and industry regulations requires your organization to remain flexible and agile to changes. Ensuring that your organization’s cybersecurity is in good standing can help mitigate potential threats and reduce risk while remaining in compliance with regulatory bodies. Being prepared can also help your business stay on top of its goals and allow for better scalability and increased performance. Knowing where there are gaps in your IT stack can also help you make the right decision on partnering with a managed service provider to bolster your security posture.

When determining the current state of your organization’s technology infrastructure and security posture, you’ll want to look at the following cybersecurity metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs):

• How slow is your network? Slow performance can include frequent crashes, unresponsive or lagging software, long loading times, slow data processing, or slow data transferring times. If you’ve flagged any of these as an issue, you’re likely experiencing decreased productivity and frustration from employees – and ultimately – your customers.
• How old is your hardware? Legacy servers, workstations, and networking equipment can be incredibly inviting to hackers, making your business more vulnerable to data breaches. Determining how often the devices on your network are updated can help you figure out the percentage of devices that are compliant. If hardware or software is no longer supported, it’s time to look for new options.
• How quickly are you deploying patches? Studies have found high percentages of data breaches, and ransomware stem from exploits of known but unpatched vulnerabilities. Make sure you are deploying the latest updates and patches needed to stay in compliance and stay protected. If the average company takes around 3 months to patch a critical vulnerability, being more responsive makes you less of a target.
• Are there unidentified devices on your internal network? Any unidentified devices, such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices or employees’ personal devices can create an entry point for bad actors to infiltrate your environment.
• How many breach attempts have you had? Documenting the number of intrusion attempts can help provide insight into how frequent the breach attempts are and identify any patterns or common sources of entry that cyber attackers are using to attempt to gain entry into your network.
• What is your Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)? Knowing your MTBF allows you to assess the durability and reliability of your IT stack. MTBF calculates the average time interval between two successive component or system failures.
• What is your Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time To Acknowledge (MTTA)? The MTTD metric determines the average time it takes for your organization to detect a potential security breach. It’s important to know how vigilant your security system is and how responsive the IT stack you have in place is should an attack occur. Your MTTA is the average time between when your organization has detected an incident and the time it takes to formally log the incident. This key metric can help you determine your organization’s readiness and ability to combat security threats.
• How many of your employees have received cybersecurity awareness training? Do you require your employees to regularly take training modules, spanning from entry-level employees to the C-suite? Maintaining good documentation for your employees to reference can help with audits and post-incident analysis. Additionally, having KPIs for cybersecurity training, such as knowledge improvement, employee behavior change, and employee engagement rates, can provide valuable insights for your organization and identify any areas that need improvement for your organization to be successful.
• Do you have a security rating? Getting an official cybersecurity risk assessment score can help you determine whether or not there are significant gaps in your infrastructure or overall cyber strategy that need to be addressed.

How Thrive Can Help

Knowing the current state of your organization’s cybersecurity posture can feel overwhelming, but analyzing key cybersecurity metrics can help identify potential issues quickly. Partnering with a Managed Service Provider like Thrive that evaluates your IT stack and builds a plan to address gaps is how many mid-market and SMB companies ensure their organization’s business goals are achievable while safeguarding their data. Contact Thrive today to learn how we can help you avoid being a statistic.