I think we can all agree, cyber security is hard. With vast and intricate modern IT ecosystems, the expanding attack surface and ever evolving threat landscape mean that it’s also an essential business requirement.
Large and often complex networks pose significant challenges for defence and detection, especially in real-time, as attackers continually develop new techniques. IT and Security teams must protect and monitor every system component, from endpoints to networks, while attackers only need to exploit a single vulnerability.
To address these challenges, the industry has traditionally relied on established methodologies like vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and governance programs. While these approaches offer essential inputs and guidance to enhance security, they usually offer little in the way of contextualisation to help businesses plan and prioritise remediation of the issues identified.
When approaching improvements to your organisation’s security posture, knowing where to start can be overwhelming. Inputs from penetration tests, security events, security scans and compliance frameworks mean both the IT and Security teams are often stretched thin. Throw in a mix of complex user requirements, legacy systems, hidden dependencies, service level agreements, resource constraints and lack of knowledge, these critical vulnerabilities are often left unaddressed.
These challenges, combined with the abundance of security advice available to businesses, make it difficult to determine which risks to prioritise. As a result, fundamental issues may be overlooked and fail to receive the attention they need.
A Structured Approach to Security Improvement
To overcome these challenges, it helps to adopt a structured approach to security improvement. This allows you to contextualise and prioritise issues effectively, plan strategically, and implement solutions that enhance your organisation’s security posture.
Whether you’re following recommendations from a cyber security assessment or proactively working towards compliance with a specific cyber security framework, it’s essential to take a step back and prioritise your efforts. By adopting a proactive approach, you can map out identified vulnerabilities, assess their significance, and focus on the most critical areas first. This planning stage provides clarity, enabling you to make meaningful progress rather than resorting to reactive measures.
While tactical “quick fixes” can be useful for reducing immediate risks, they should only serve as temporary measures. These fixes help bring risk down to an acceptable level and give breathing space to implement medium- and long-term strategic improvements.
While quick fixes typically require minimal time and effort, prioritisation should consider both how easily an issue could be exploited and the potential impact on your network. However, don’t overlook the compound risks. An example of this are findings from a red team exercise which may reveal that the cumulative effect of small vulnerabilities is much greater than they appear individually. Breaking or monitoring key points in the attack chain should be part of your immediate plan.
Medium-term improvements should focus on implementing solutions with more lasting impacts. These typically involve high-level design work, user acceptance testing, and potentially significant changes to infrastructure. Examples include decommissioning legacy systems, introducing more secure alternatives, and adopting measures such as application whitelisting or MXDR.
Although these enhancements require more effort and coordination, they can be integrated into your organisation’s improvement program. The key is to balance short-term risk management with ongoing investments in your long-term security strategy.
By aligning tactical fixes, medium-term enhancements, and strategic priorities, you can create a roadmap that strengthens your security posture effectively and sustainably.
How Sapphire can Help
- Access to resources capable of advising, recommending, and implementing security improvements—whether working alongside or on behalf of client teams and suppliers—transforms penetration testing outcomes from static reports to actionable improvements.
- By integrating cybersecurity engineers dedicated to security enhancement activities within your security improvement program, you can achieve a steady, structured approach to improvements. This consistent engagement allows you to prioritise enhancements systematically.
- Leveraging a Security Improvement & Remediation Engineering service to assist in creating and addressing the backlog generated by vulnerability and penetration testing programs enables you to create an actionable plan. This approach helps focus internal teams on critical risks while augmenting your capabilities with attacker and defender expertise, ensuring continuous enhancement of your security posture and effective exposure management.
For further information about our service or to speak to a consultant, please contact Sapphire on 0845 58 27001.
