This article provides simple yet practical questions to ask your managed service providers regarding the cyber security of their systems and the services they provide.
The Essential Eight from the Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents offers prioritised and practical advice to manage a variety of cyber threats to systems and the information that they process, store or communicate.
By implementing the Essential Eight, managed service providers could demonstrate that they are implementing better practice cyber security to protect themselves and their customers.
Managed service providers often have privileged access to systems. Therefore, it is important that they manage such systems in a secure manner, specifically when systems are managed remotely.
By implementing the guidance from the Secure Administration publication Managed service providers could demonstrate that they are securely administering their systems and services.
To detect and respond to targeted cyber intrusions and malicious insiders, good visibility of what is happening is important. But unfortunately, organisations often have poor visibility of the activities occurring on their systems.
By implementing the guidance from the Windows Event Logging and Forwarding publication, managed service providers could demonstrate that they are monitoring activity on their systems and services.
It is vital that managed service providers are aware of, and fittingly risk manage, security vulnerabilities in their systems and services in order to protect their systems, and that of their customers.
By conducting regular vulnerability assessment activities, managed service providers could demonstrate that they are regularly evaluating their systems and services.
Facing a cyber security incident is not a question of if but when as everyone experience it at least once knowingly or unknowingly. Therefore, any effective preparation for facing and responding to a cyber security incident can greatly reduce its impact.
Additional backing by specialists might be required to contain the incident and remediate any security vulnerabilities that were exploited depending on the extent of a cyber security incident. Active reporting of the cyber security incidents can help in the early and effective management of cyber security incidents by specialists trained in this field.
By implementing the guidance from the Preparing for and Responding to Cyber Security Incidents publication, managed service providers could demonstrate that they are prepared for, and able to respond to, cyber security incidents.
The Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM) aids in the protection of information that is processed, stored or communicated by organisations’ systems.
It can be found at https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/view-all-content/ism.
The Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents supports the advice in the ISM.
The complete list of strategies could be found at https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/view-all-content/publications/strategies-mitigate-cyber-security-incidents.