You don’t build a house without foundations so you shouldn’t do the same when you build a security system.
Incorporating security processes at the beginning means you have a better chance of avoiding information getting into the wrong hands and keeping online information safe and secure.
Chris Blake, Director, and Principal Data Protection & Privacy Consultant, said: “We talk a lot about the importance of building a secure system at the start of the process. This way it is far easier to maintain rather than find and fix vulnerabilities as they occur. We call this Secure By Design.
“If you build in security from the start you save time and money. Without doing so you end up testing a system that you may find is not secure and have to re-do the work.”
There are a number of good practices you can employ as you develop your security process:
- Identify all the parts that make up your system - this ensures everything you want is covered and it’s easy to address any actions that need to be taken
- Make a system as difficult to penetrate as possible - make it hard for an attacker to reach any parts of your system and compromise your data
- Design a resilient system - make disruption as difficult to avoid the denial of attacks
- Make it easy to detect suspicious activity - while there’s still the chance something may happen be able to recognise unexpected behaviour
- Reduce the impact of an attack - if a hacker does get into your system make it as hard as possible for them to do any real damage
- Make it easy to recover following an attack - design a system where you can recover and maintain the records and data you’ll need to investigate the incident
- Understand how different devices interact with your system and how they might create a vulnerability - pay attention to third-party service providers, network security devices, where copies of your data are stored and communications over insecure networks
- Design simple communication flows between elements - this can simplify security analysis and let you identify when something is not quite right
- Design for easy maintenance - regular monitoring for security vulnerabilities allows you to fix them quickly
If you are looking for help in building a secure system Get in touch to enquire more about our services.