Best Security Practices Public Sector Organizations Need to Consider
The public sector organizations deal with a mass of sensitive data, from private medical records to social security numbers to military intelligence records. Protecting this data constantly is their foremost priority, which means their IT teams are trusted with employing the most efficient security measures to avoid attacks or internal misadventures. Hackers know this and have turned more focus towards local and state government agencies.
These public sector organizations face more pressure while developing software to reinforce the security of essential citizen services. These organizations have their own challenges for delivering secure enough applications to protect national records. The timeframe for delivering applications is short, skills are scarce, and they are usually tight on their budgets. To overcome the limitation of workforce and skills in their security team, they needed extra hands of managed application security professionals.
Changing how the public sector thinks of security to enable everyone to fight cyber criminals more proactively is the most crucial and necessary change to make. Here are some critical steps that public sector organizations need to consider;
Develop a consistent DevSecOps Environment:
Employing a shift left approach in the development cycle of applications is the best approach. Set up the development environment to include security testing by using a security testing platform. This will run in the background of all activities developers do and send alerts to instances of vulnerable lines of code. With this security testing employed to the core of application development, you will identify vulnerabilities earlier and easier. Plus, this is a less costly and less time-consuming way to fix security issues.
Address the Human Factor with Security Training:
The employees working in an organization bring the most significant risk to data compliance. Even low-level employees have access to so much sensitive data in the course of their day-to-day duties. Employees who use a weak password or click on a malicious link can unintentionally expose thousands of records. Companies need their employees to conduct regular cyber security training sessions to prevent this. They also need to avoid scams of phishing and identify irregularities that might indicate a security incident.
Choose solutions that fully integrates into CI platforms:
No developer writes vulnerable code intentionally but often lacks empowerment. Using platforms that provide automation and guidance for developers on how to fix vulnerabilities will give them more ownership for security. This will allow them to enhance their skills and fix the issues in real-time. Contact your managed application security provider to deliver the AppSec platform that has the flexibility to integrate with whichever environment the developer is using.
Create an Incident Response Plan:
In this cyber climate, organizations should expect data security incidents at any time. Knowing this, different data privacy laws need organizations to implement cybersecurity incident response plans. With this plan in place, organizations can act quickly to minimize damage in case of an incident. The plan must outline instant response steps, along with recovery plans. It’s imperative to implement data compliance best practices with the help of cybersecurity consultancy & advisory services.
Choosing the right application security platform is crucial in building secure applications without compromising the way developers want to work. Remember that risk management is a continuous process and demands frequent review as new risks and vulnerabilities emerge.
