There are many moving parts agencies need to keep track of to remain in compliance and know when something isn’t performing as expected in the changing security environment. Imagine if a server were to suddenly become unresponsive, but nobody knew. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework provides a structure, but alerts make everything actionable to maintain a robust and resilient cybersecurity environment. Alerts also make compliance easy while providing robust security.
NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework encompasses a guide for establishing standardized cybersecurity among agencies. The best practices outlined in the framework help build and improve security postures through flexible recommendations. The framework categorizes all cybersecurity capabilities with these core functions: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. Matt Barrett, former program manager for the Cybersecurity Framework at NIST, commented the framework “is still flexible to meet an individual organization’s business or mission needs and applies to a wide range of technology environments, such as information technology, industrial control systems, and the internet of things.”
Agencies can use solutions designed to help bolster responses to threats with alerts for identifying, protecting, detecting, responding, and recovering information throughout the infrastructure. For example, alert platforms can tell IT staff if there’s a need to identify threats within the system or a need for a response to restart a service or share the information with other systems during the detection. Alerts help monitor IT infrastructures and resolve issues from a single interface. This consolidation helps alleviate the burden of consistently monitoring several solutions.
If a server becomes unresponsive, alerts help notify teams this has happened within the network. With advanced solutions, alerts can be customized with conditions to know what network event was triggered. Other customization options can include scheduling alerts to monitor during a certain time period or notifying specific people based on how long the alert has been triggered. Alerts can save valuable response time if part of an agency’s network goes down. They can also streamline and promote efficiencies by notifying teams when application response time slows.
Alert platforms provide solutions for agencies to stay in compliance with the NIST framework. They also provide agencies with the opportunity to better monitor inefficiencies within the organization and notify teams when actions are needed. In the case of mission-critical events, alerts can save time in detection and response.
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