The Australian Cyber Security Centre’s (ACSC) Essential Eight framework has the potential to make Australia a global leader in cybersecurity. While it challenges organisations to develop a more strategic approach to cybersecurity, it also introduces some new risks to IT environments that organisations will need to grapple with in the coming years.
One of the biggest risks is additional costs. Research by Andrew Milroy at Focus Network found that 38 percent of IT leaders expect their cybersecurity budgets to increase in 2024, and according to Panaseer’s Security Leader’s Peer Report, enterprise security teams use an average of 76 security tools. In Australia, most organizations are somewhere between stage one (“focus on prevention alone”) and stage two (“limited access management and visibility across the network”) of the four-stage path to cybersecurity maturity.according to Milroy’s research.
On this basis, there is a real risk that the number of tools used will Efforts to increase cybersecurity maturity are increasing, creating additional complexity (at a time when Australia has a historic shortage of cybersecurity talent) and inefficiencies in the technology environment (leading to additional costs).
Organizations must take a strategic approach to complying with the Essential Eight framework and accelerating cybersecurity maturity.
It starts with understanding that compliance with the Essential Eight must be more than a simple checkbox-checking process or compliance as a strategy. A key example of this is access and identity management. Several of the Essential Eight requirements essentially mandate that organizations adopt a zero-trust approach to identity, with a particular focus on least privileges.
However, rather than simply taking a minimum effort approach to these aspects of the Essential Eight, an organization can look to leverage Privileged Access Management (PAM) to gain greater visibility and understanding of the entire IT environment. This can also enable secure remote access to networks and management while meeting compliance requirements. It can also scale efficiently with a much more streamlined approach to adding and managing new users.
When CISOs and CIOs meet the eight essential requirements by aligning with Zero Trust, they can also use this as an opportunity to increase the value of the IT environment for the business and anticipate future compliance requirements.
Avoiding future supplier consolidation
PwC research suggests that Australian organisations are more confident than the global average that they have the “right number of cybersecurity technology solutions” in place. However, organisations also rank low on the maturity scale. While efforts to evolve the cybersecurity environment continue, a lack of strategic vision could lead to a rapidly sprawling environment that could then become costly and inefficient to untangle and dismantle.
Adopting a platform approach to cybersecurity, where a single vendor can cover multiple areas of the Essential Eight, helps avoid the need for a vendor consolidation transformation project, and the benefits can extend beyond that.
First, with the right platform, an organization can gain a centralized view of key parts of its security environment, making management less resource intensive and reducing the potential for gaps in security coverage. For example: A Solution The can provide cover through application control, restriction of administrator rights and securing user applications The can also provide compensating controls over a number of the other essential Eight strategies.
This gives the company a better overview of the total cost of cybersecurity and can also facilitate decisions to improve cost efficiency.
Maintaining a smaller selection of vendors and security platforms can also lead to faster incident response. This is a key goal of both the Essential Eight and the government’s overall cybersecurity strategy, and is simply good business practice to minimize the cost of threats and breaches. Because identities are at the heart of many data breaches and security incidents, integrating all identity security data and tools into a single platform enables security teams to quickly correlate information, assess the scope of an incident, and initiate a coordinated response. Automated workflows and playbooks further accelerate the response process and minimize the potential damage from security breaches.
Finally, a platform approach to cybersecurity means more agility. Platforms are generally designed to integrate seamlessly with existing tools such as Microsoft controls, and The right platform provider will provide support and updates, ensuring that the latest threat intelligence and security technologies are integrated into the platform. This continuous development helps companies stay one step ahead of new threats and maintain a robust security posture over time.
The Essential Eight have challenged many organizations to rapidly improve their cybersecurity maturity model to ensure compliance. Those who limit themselves to this will find that while they meet the minimum requirements, their cybersecurity environment is costing them even more than before.
Companies that view the Essential Eight as an opportunity to take a holistic and strategic approach to cybersecurity will not only remain compliant, but will also have a strategic asset that provides lasting value to the entire organization.
