Like it or not, cyberattacks are now a regular occurrence, and part of everyday life. However, despite this predictability, it still remains impossible to pinpoint exactly when and where they will occur. This means that businesses must remain vigilant, constantly on the lookout for any and all potential threats.
From the moment a company is created, it must be assumed that attacks will be coming. Just because it is new and unknown does not mean it is safe. Take DeepSeek for example, despite being the new kid on the block, as soon as its name hit the news, it was hit with a severe large-scale attack. However, this does not give established companies an excuse to drop their guard.
The past couple of months alone have seen some of the biggest names in retail fall victim, with large scale companies like M&S and Dior unable to properly defend against attacks. No matter how big the company, it is vital to employ a well-rounded cybersecurity strategy that provides security from the foundational stages of development through to the latest iteration.
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Dan Bridges
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Technical Director – International, Cyware.
Siloed teams are outdated
The key to weathering the storm of cyberattacks is a firm foundation. Cybersecurity principles must be embedded from the outset, ensuring a strong and secure beginning for any product or system development. These defenses must be continually built upon, monitored, tested and updated on a proactive basis to ensure any potential vulnerabilities are mitigated before they can become a threat.
Threats are constantly evolving, and the attack defended against today could be the one that breaks through tomorrow. Therefore it is imperative to keep any and all threat intelligence up to date, monitoring threats in real-time and continuously sharing the information business-wide.
Unfortunately, it is the dissemination of this information that can cause issues – especially when different teams are receiving information late, or not at all. This is often the case in organizations that employ a siloed approach, with individual teams working in isolation from each other.
This fragmented structure can not only impact an organization’s ability to detect and respond to threats, but the capability to learn from them and share these insights with other teams. Without a formal structure in place to facilitate cross-team collaboration, teams may develop different processes in parallel, use different tools, and fail to communicate across functions when facing risks or as incidents unfold.
As a result, security controls are inconsistent, making it tough, if not impossible, to establish standard methods for sharing threat intelligence and incident response procedures.
Introducing collaboration
A centralized platform that unifies threat intelligence company-wide will strengthen security efforts across departments and ensure that teams operate as part of shared vision. Creating common goals and metrics encourages collaboration and establishes a clear sense of purpose. Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs) enable organizations to adopt this approach, integrating across business systems and providing automated intelligence sharing.
TIPs act as the heart of an organization’s cyber defenses, gathering information from across multiple sources, from public feeds, to industry reports, and distributing it across all teams. They are able to sift through the data and identify serious threats, advising teams where to focus their efforts to prioritize the most at-risk vulnerabilities.
Through the automation of processes such as data collection and by removing internal communication barriers, organizations can translate scattered, complex cyber‑threat information into coordinated action to protect critical assets faster and comprehensively. This will result in improved threat detection, quicker incident response times and a greater overall cyber resilience.
The hyper-orchestration approach
The hyper-orchestration approach builds upon these foundations of collaboration and collective defense, replacing siloed teams with a united threat intelligence network. Employing this structure from the formation of a business will allow organizations to avoid the formation of individual teams, and enhance their cybersecurity capabilities from the outset.
This collective defense approach coordinates threat intelligence and response activities to tackle specific security threats. Perhaps one of the most notable examples of collective defense in action is the Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC), which collects, analyses and disseminates actionable threat information to its members.
These centers enable organizations to identify and mitigate risks and boost their cyber resilience. ISACs are made up of a comprehensive group of highly competent and professional organizations, with the National Council of ISACs currently comprising almost 30 sector-specific organizations, for example.
Recent research highlights the importance of this collective defense approach, with 90% of cybersecurity professionals believing collaboration and information sharing are very important or crucial for a strong cyber defense. Despite this, nearly three-quarters (70%) feel their organization needs to do more to improve threat intelligence sharing capabilities.
It is clear that a collective defense approach is growing more popular, with dedicated information sharing roles now recognised at the highest levels of government and regulation. The EU Network and Information Systems Directive 2 (NIS2), which came into force last October, is a clear example of this – focusing on the resilience of sectors that are under particular risk.
With clear importance being placed on collaboration in cybersecurity, organizations must take steps to incorporate this approach into their cyber security strategies from day one. Employing hyper orchestration and collective defense is key to enhancing cyber resilience and ensuring systems are secure through every stage of a business’ development.
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