The Cybersecurity Blueprint: A Four-Part Model For Providing Comprehensive Layered Security

Cyberattacks have increased in both number and severity over the past few years. The press has focused primarily on ransomware attacks. It makes sense: some research has shown that ransomware will cost roughly $5 billion USD in 2017 alone. To put that in context, that’s higher than the gross domestic product of many small countries and territories, like the US Virgin Islands, the Maldives, or Gambia.

But while ransomware has received the majority of the press, other cyberthreats have grown in their severity as well, threatening both individuals and businesses. Whether it’s a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack taking down a website (or entire portions of the internet), stolen intellectual property due to compromised passwords or improper employee access, or widespread automated attacks against unpatched software, businesses have to stay vigilant against attacks from all vectors.

Organizations seem to be rising to the occasion, with cybersecurity budgets growing at a rapid clip. In fact, estimates show that cybersecurity budgets will total roughly $1 trillion USD during the period of time between 2017 and 2021.

If you’re an IT service provider, this gives you a massive opportunity to generate more revenue. However, dealing with the sheer variety of attacks these days—ransomware, malicious insider attacks, and advanced persistent threats, among others—requires that you take a broad, layered approach to security for your clients.

But where do you begin? What tools do you need? And how do you even assess what each client needs to stay protected?

This paper presents a model for providing comprehensive layered security to managed services clients. By working within this framework, you can systematically approach each client’s network (or even your own) and know what elements to put in place to provide strong layered security. You’ll also have a good sense of where your employees need additional training and what tools and processes they need to master.