Acquisition of new security tools are not an easy task to handle. Some procurement activities are tedious and requires months of effort to select the right tool that meets all your expectations. In this blog, we are going to list out top 10 mistakes in cyber security buying to avoid while procuring new security tools. Let’s get to it.
The value is not communicated to all the stakeholders (from boards to employees)
It so happens that CISO’s often find hard to articulate the value that the security control will bring to the organisation. Be it Board or a specific department or a group of employees, they must understand the value of security and the reason for using any such control.
In-depth use cases are not clearly defined:
Identify the most important use-cases specific to your organisation before you buy any security tool. It helps you create custom rule-sets and policies which in turn will help you get the most out of your tool.
Holistic search of vendors and product comparisons not done
There may be many vendors with either same or similar offerings. Some vendor’s capabilities may be comprehensive others it may be very basic. Pricing and licensing models may also vary greatly from vendors to vendors. Security managers need to evaluate and do product comparisons with as many vendors as they can before zeroing on any single vendor.
Read more:( Top 50 Emerging Vendors to look out for in 2017)
Enough Peer reviews & user feedback not collected
Most security mangers may not know about this but peer review and ratings of security products are available online and can be leveraged to learn from other people’s experience. Check for Peer review before you select on any vendors or their products. Peer reviews can tell you about vendors after sale support, Product Bottlenecks, implementation challenges and so on.
READ MORE >> Cyber Security Maturity Report of Indian Industry (2017)
Tool’s compatibility with existing technology and process stack is not tested
Check whether the tool is compatible with your organisation existing processes. It should support and enhance the existing processes and not be in conflict with any. If its conflicting define exceptions and document them properly. Request vendors for feature customization.
Vendor’s local Support, self or through partners are not considered
Check their support services because human factor is important. It’s not always about the product after sale services matter. Check if the local support is available to you from vendor side or through their partners.
Vendor’s background check and ability to execute is not verified
Do your due diligence before finalising on any vendor. Ask for case studies, take Proof of concept and ask for their competitors.
Vendor’s risk due diligence is not conducted properly
Organization’s also often ignore to check the vendors risk profile and 3rd party risks. You need a robust vendor risk management program before security buying. Please verify from open source intelligence whether there are any major vulnerabilities in their products, patching cadence, past security history, strength of their internal security program, benchmarking against their competition etc.
The Governance policy for that security program is not designed and documented
Any security program to be successful needs proper governance framework & policies. Create policy document specific to each security program.
What do you think could be other points?
Please suggest your ideas in the comments. We would love to hear your opinion.
.png)
Comments