Security professionals need to be laser-focused on strengthening their security posture, but with huge attack surfaces and a multitude of ever-advancing threats, the challenge can sometimes seem insurmountable. However, by using the right tools coupled with a deep understanding of their most valuable business assets, security teams can create a winning strategy that protects their business without overextending themselves or creating an overly complicated tool stack.

While that sounds well and good, how can security pros get to that ideal state? During our latest webinar, Maximize Your Existing Security Tools & Systems to Harden Your Security Posture, CYREBRO’s CTO, Ori Arbel, and 10 Root’s Co-Founder, Yossi Sassi, answered that question and offered a roadmap that security leaders can follow.

Below are a few highlights of the four topics covered during the webinar, but we recommend watching it in full if you find yourself unsure of how to get the most out of the one you have.

Topic 1: Understanding and Defining Your Risks

Many businesses tend to take a “follow the trends approach.” That sends them chasing after tools that will protect against the vulnerabilities currently being discussed in news cycles but ones that might not even be relevant for their particular security needs. To avoid falling into that trap, you should identify your most important assets and critical data and know which attacks are most relevant to your verticals.

Yossi and Ori laid out the steps you should follow:

• Know the assets you need to protect, and which are most critical
• Determine what kind of resources you need to protect them
• Identify the threat scenarios that are most likely to impact your business and vertical
• Select the tools that work for your situation

Topic 2: Less is More

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of free tools available. Instead of downloading every tool you come across, consider getting back to basics and fully utilizing the tools you already have. Look into your operating systems and make the most of the built-in tools, capabilities, and features.

You can also gain a lot of value without additional expenses by looking at your processes and addressing potential issues using the central management features of operating systems. Taking simple steps such as addressing the processes and access levels for new employees or those leaving the company can significantly impact security measures. Simply turning on 2-factor authentication (which is already built-in to most solutions but turned off by default) will offer additional layers of security without additional manpower or costs.

Topic 3: Understanding Your Security Posture

Yossi and Ori made a great point that people often forget: your systems should work for you – you shouldn’t be working for them. If you’ve inherited a toolset that doesn’t fit your routine, find that you have multiple reporting tools, or notice that multiple tools are creating the same alerts, pare down your stack to the tools that fit your routine and add efficiency to your daily tasks.

Remember that turnkey solutions are fantastic options and built for specific industries, but they still need to be customized to work best for you. Make sure you fully understand how to merge those with your other tools, your processes, procedures.

Topic 4: Centralized Vision

Yossi and Ori dive into the three main challenges businesses face: a lack of professional knowledge, not knowing how sophisticated attacks are and how often they occur, and gaps in visibility.

All three of those problems must be addressed, otherwise, you won’t be able to create a centralized vision. You need to find ways to ensure that all your systems and teams work together in unison.

Watch the entire webinar to find out how to create cohesions and tackle these challenges with confidence.