Maintaining a mature security program helps to drive significant improvements in governance and compliance at any organization, from a small business to a large enterprise. The more mature a company’s security program becomes, the better the organization’s risk management and overall security culture.

Cybersecurity maturity refers to how effectively an organization supports its security defenses throughout all business growth and operations stages. As an organization evolves, its needs change, as well. This means a mature cybersecurity program focuses on continuous improvement along the way.

Maintaining a Mature Security Program

The overall goal of security maturity is to leave reactive approaches behind. A mature security program creates an intelligence-driven approach to strengthening security posture. Cybersecurity maturity is a model that ensures IT process and technology is just as disciplined as other operations. It requires executive involvement, planning, and proactive improvement to ensure a high level of preparedness for thwarting cybersecurity threats.

At the highest level of maturity, the security program promotes assessment, monitoring, and improvement of IT processes. Documented policies and procedures are communicated and enforced at higher levels, and the organization has a robust security culture.

Not every organization needs to obtain the highest level of maturity to be effective. The best model for an organization is cost-effective and industry appropriate. Attention to employee awareness and the overall approach to security and risk improves maturity at any size or budget.

Once an organization’s security program has gotten off to the right start, maintaining a mature security program requires regular assessments to identify gaps between industry best practices and the organization’s documentation and enforcement of policies and procedures. Quality assessments evaluate the integration of the IT security program into the organization’s culture. Assessing policies and security controls allows your organization to improve documentation, testing, and integration. As this cycle of testing and improvement continues, the security program becomes more mature. In addition to assessments, annual comprehensive security, risk, and compliance testing will help avoid future incidents by identifying security flaws and potential vulnerabilities.

For more information on security maturity, read our white paper on Managing Cybersecurity Maturity.