The Urgency of Action: Gain More Focus on Cybersecurity Initiatives

A focused approach to cybersecurity is an automated approach.

Between STIG compliance requirements, Zero Trust and CCRIs, DoD agencies have a lot on their cybersecurity plates at a time when the supply of qualified workers is far outnumbered by demand.

The constant scramble to meet these requirements, ironically, comes at the cost of focus—focus on mandated requirements, focus on inspection, focus on actionable intelligence and, importantly, focus on proactive measures that fall outside of baseline requirements. With attention, manpower and time stretched thin, a lack of focus can put your organization at risk.

Focus on STIG updates and compliance.

Every quarter, DISA releases new STIG updates. The 2023 Q1 updates were 31 pages long. That’s 31 pages of manual remediation, man hours, and focus spent on a task that can be completed in minutes by automated compliance remediation tools.

At a time of a well-documented and long-lasting cyber workforce shortage, automation can create the opportunity to focus on other tasks. With manpower eased, you’ll have the time to effectively manage the big picture of network security, spot trends in security control failures, author policies to simplify STIG compliance even further and use your actionable intelligence to harden your system against increasingly sophisticated attacks.

Focus on actionable measures like Zero Trust.

Zero Trust assumes that no actor/service/system can be trusted and, therefore, moves the concept of cyber defense from the perimeter of the network to—or closer to—the individual data repository or application. Equally important, Zero Trust increases the breadth and depth of continual verification and evaluation versus the traditional single verification at the network perimeter. Mandated Zero Trust cybersecurity objectives must be met by September 2024.

In order for Zero Trust—and other actionable security measures to work effectively, however, they must be built on a secure baseline. Which means meeting and maintaining STIG requirements and practicing good cyber hygiene. As mentioned above, STIG automation can free up your manpower to focus on establishing Zero Trust and other objectives.

Focus on CCRIs and other requirements.

After a COVID hiatus, CCRIs are back, along with the pressure they put on your teams. Part of a CCRI is about human behavior and physical security. And the other part is about your network security. Automation can ease the focus on the network security piece so you can ensure physical security.

ConfigOS not only removes 90% of the effort and 70% of the time associated with STIG compliance, but it also indexes every corner of your network and generates the reports that show your compliance. Chances are you won’t get a lot of notice for your CCRI. Automation can make that lack of time less significant.

Focus on overall security.

Agency security is built from the network up. And network security is simplified—and strengthened with unparalleled consistency—by automation. ConfigOS keeps you on top of your STIG game with very little effort or expertise needed. And once you have your security controls handled, you can focus on creating Zero Trust and passing your CCRI.

SteelCloud’s patented compliance automation software, ConfigOS, can remove 90% of the manual effort associated with compliance measures and return focus to your team.

It just sounds like words until you see it in action, however. Then jaws drop, opinions change, and everyone wonders why they didn’t know about this sooner. Schedule a demo of ConfigOS and see how it changes your focus today!