Cisco Network Associates

If the prospect of putting together a digital security plan to protect your business data seems daunting, you’re not alone and we’re here to help. Below, our team shares tips regarding key things to stay mindful of that’ll help guide your process. 1. Familiarize Yourself with Risks Appreciating the urgency of creating a cybersecurity strategy before you begin making investments is key. With an understanding of how common security threats are and how they’ve affected competing businesses, you’ll find the prospect of cutting corners less attractive as you start exploring solutions. Familiarizing yourself with security risks can be done via running an online search for data leaks. Better yet, formalize your familiarization process by talking to security consultants and asking them to brief you on what risk factors your industry is experiencing. 2. Understand Your Budget You could believe that there is no line-item more important to your business than security investments. Despi...

One area where new security consultants struggle is in their need to specialize. A consultant who seeks to be a jack of all trades, covering a wide variety of security functions, maybe a master of none. The benefit to a security consulting career is the ability to work with a wide variety of clients in different national and international locations and doing interesting work. But to work on projects most effectively, security consultants must focus their marketing and delivery efforts on a handful of activities where they have proven their expertise. Cybersecurity experts don’t typically know how to work on security guard force management projects, and physical security specialists don’t always know how to handle employees with mental health problems who make threats. It pays to stick to what you know and what you can do best and to emphasize a few highly developed skill sets—not a collection of many things you can’t always do well. It makes it much easier for clients to know what to b...