Nor Should They Be!
Traditional IT personnel come from various backgrounds, including server administration, desktop support, telecommunications, and network engineering. Each domain has some element of cybersecurity defensive layers embedded in some form.
Becoming a cybersecurity expert extends beyond placing a host-based intrusion prevention agent on a server or configuring private VLANs for network segmentation. The same holds for cybersecurity experts who do not have the same level of knowledge in managing servers, configuring routers and switches, or auto-provisioning a desktop image.
Cybersecurity expertise transcends how attacks happen and what the organization can do to detect and prevent attacks and continues to be gatekeepers for defensive tools.
Organizations with traditional IT staff looking to ramp up their cybersecurity knowledge and expertise must hire managed detection and response (MDR) like ForeNova. Forenova, a global provider of MDR services, helps organizations ramp up resources with an extensive cybersecurity detection and prevention background.
Interested in learning more about Forenova and its resource augmentation and MDR services? Click here to schedule a demonstration of their NovaMDR platform today!
Typical IT Responsibilities vs. Cybersecurity Demands
Classic IT responsibilities include purchasing laptops and servers, creating virtual machines, and installing software, just to name a few. IT departments cover many daily technology functions, including local network and internet access, wireless connectivity, and management of various data sources.
Cybersecurity personnel focus on improving the organization’s security posture. However, because compliance mandates require the separation of duties, the cybersecurity team, including the security operations center (SecOps), reports to a different organizational structure. Classic IT reports to the Chief Information Officer (CIO), and the cybersecurity team reports to the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). In some organizations, the CISO reports to the CIO or the Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
Most cybersecurity departments consider classic IT their internal customer. Their role involves managing all cybersecurity defensive tools, including firewalls, remote access, intrusion protection, endpoint security, application security, and physical security controls.
Another critical component of the cybersecurity workforce is staffing and supporting all SecOps functions with the proper security skills. These functions include 24×7 monitoring of all cybersecurity protocols and defensive tools looking for cyberattacks. These attacks include email phishing, ransomware attacks, data exfiltration, or identity theft. Qualified cybersecurity professionals, including engineers, architects, and threat modeling experts, have unique and critical skills to combat these threats.
The skills required to join cybersecurity and SecOps teams differ greatly from those needed by classic IT resources.
Skills Gap Between IT and Cybersecurity
The skills gap continues to widen as more organizations face an increasing number of cybersecurity attacks that impact all elements of their enterprise networks, cloud instances, and applications. The more IT resources deployed across an organization, the greater the security threats against the ever-growing attack surface.
IT personnel, especially network engineers, cloud architects, and mobility engineers, learn elements of cybersecurity protection specific to their domain. SecOps teams and security architects collaborate with classic IT engineers to create a new cloud environment, perform internal audits, or enable broader cybersecurity defensive controls to help protect various IT platforms.
IT engineers invest equally in ongoing training and knowledge specific to their domains. Cybersecurity teams also stay current on the latest cyberattacks and new technology, including artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, and continuously improve their ability to leverage automation to help stop attacks without human intervention.
CIOs and CISOs leverage continuous education and automation to help address their various service needs. These leaders also leverage automation to help address the constant challenge of hiring and keeping talent. Some organizations attempt to cross-train IT and cybersecurity engineers to help address staffing and budget shortfalls.
While leveraging cross-training as a temporary stopgap, CISOs and CIOs recognize that this strategy creates a longer-term risk to the organization.
The Risks of Dual Roles
While creating dual roles to address staffing shortages may provide temporary relief and coverage, IT and cybersecurity teams will ultimately fall behind in staying current with their respective technology disciplines.
Cybersecurity engineers continue to be in high demand. While many are open to learning skills, especially outside of their current domain, many prefer to stay within the cybersecurity field.
Classic IT engineers investing in cybersecurity training also value learning new skills. However, by spending time away from the traditional domain, most engineers risk falling behind the latest innovations and capabilities within their current IT tools and solutions.
Combining Cybersecurity Professionals with IT Staff
Nurturing competent IT and cybersecurity engineers who focus on continuously improving their skills within their most substantial domain helps the organization maximize use of their talents. This ensures that IT resources are deployed correctly and that the proper level of cybersecurity tools are enabled and sustained.
This strategy also helps reduce organizational risk. The challenge of retaining IT and cybersecurity talent compels the senior leadership teams to merge or consider subcontracting with external resources.
Leveraging contracting resources helps organizations inject expert resources into their various IT and cybersecurity teams almost immediately. Staff augmentations help organizations fill necessary roles instead of hiring a full-time employee. These external resources often come with years of experience in IT and cybersecurity.
Developing a blended internal and external IT and cybersecurity resources model into one team, especially for small-to-medium (SMB) and mid-enterprise organizations, helps reduce costs and promotes better collaboration. The risk of too much cross-training is far less compared to a larger organization.
Within these smaller organizations, IT and cybersecurity personnel cover several roles. This overlapping coverage often becomes a reality, especially if the organization struggles with funding. This overlapping of teams allows for developing a coverage model in case one resource departs the organization or goes on vacation.
Burnout and Workforce Shortages
Merging IT and cybersecurity teams brings considerable benefits to organizations. However, employees becoming burnt out from supporting several roles remains a problem for all organizations. CIOs and CISOs looking to lower their overall IT and cybersecurity costs place a huge burden on their people, ultimately with the result that employees leave the firm and seek employment elsewhere.
Even with investments in security automation, extended detection and response, and staff augmentation from an outside resource, senior leaders who choose to pressure employees still face job burnout realities.
Replacing valuable internal talent becomes an even more significant challenge, especially if these resources have been with the firm for several years and possess valuable tribal knowledge of corporate networks, applications, and cybersecurity controls.
The risk of losing high-value resources and their tribal knowledge poses severe risks to the organization. Replacing talent with years of internal experience is nearly impossible.
Organizations look towards developing longer-term relationships with managed service providers to outsource all or most IT and cybersecurity functions. Organizations wanting to create a fixed-cost model for their IT and cybersecurity functions often make this decision and reduce overall organizational risk relating to workforce shortages.
The Role of Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
Managed detection and response (MDR) providers continue to become strategic and tactical resources for CISOs and CIOs. MDR providers like Forenova specialize in a specific cybersecurity skill set and have experience in incident response automation, endpoint security, and compliance reporting.
ForeNova’s premier platform, NovaMDR, is built to accept log files from several sources, including Microsoft M365 and other security architectures. NovaMDR helps organizations reduce SecOps operations costs by providing 24×7 monitoring, rapid incident response, and log management while becoming a valued partner to your IT and cybersecurity teams.
MDR providers help create a lower-cost, highly flexible support model as staff augmentation or a fully outsourced engagement. CIOs and CISOs favor MDR providers like Forenova to help meet various compliance and privacy regulations.
NIS2, DORA, KRITIS, and others require 24×7 monitoring of critical hosts, applications, and portals. Forenova’s NovaMDR platform helps meet compliance mandates through its various service offerings.
Why ForeNova?
Are you considering leveraging an MDR provider as a staff augmentation or outsourced partner? ForeNova continues to set the gold standard in MDR service engagements. Their various service offerings are priced to help SMBs and mid-enterprise firms with a much-needed cybersecurity defensive strategy at an affordable price.
ForeNova’s unique ability to craft its MDR service offerings to align with various industries, including healthcare, automotive, education, and retail, makes it a preferred partner with my CISOs and CISOs.
