Have you overestimated your organization’s security maturity?

A version of this article appeared in Dark Reading. It has been updated and syndicated here.


As most businesses navigate the ebb and flow of growth, innovation, and digital transformation, it’s only natural that some areas remain works in progress as a company scales. This is often the case for an organization’s cybersecurity program, especially as security leaders fight to stay one step ahead of new threats, vulnerabilities, and technological developments that increase risk exposure.

However, with a persistent skills shortage at odds with the deluge of code being written to satisfy the world’s software needs, many businesses are falling behind in their cybersecurity strategy and existing infrastructure. And with the industry seemingly fixated on a tools-based approach, the power of skilled people is often missed in a functioning defensive program. 

It’s time we took an honest look at our overall cybersecurity maturity, and assessed the viable quick wins that are right in front of us.

Sustainable cybersecurity maturity is a process.

It is easy for the public to assume that every business would have a robust cybersecurity program, and protection is just a matter of selecting the right software and activating it like a force shield to stop threat actors in their tracks. With 2022 being one of the worst years on record for cyber incidents - including the entire Costa Rican government being held for ransom - many security professionals could only wish it was that simple. 

While many industries - especially in the financial sector - are compliance-driven and bound by increasingly complex regulatory frameworks that demand strict security measures, the reality is that most organizations are lacking in cyber resilience. More than half of large companies worldwide are not effective in stopping cyberattacks, nor are they finding and fixing exploited vulnerabilities quickly. 

Even organizations considered advanced, with a defined, mature program encompassing a best practice triple-threat of people, processes, and technologies, can struggle to keep up with the fast-paced demands of the threat landscape. One critical area in which many companies fall short is role-based security awareness, especially for the development team. While every person in an organization must understand the role they play in reducing the attack surface, those who are wrangling code day in, day out, could be in the driver’s seat of a genuinely transformational approach to security… if only they were adequately upskilled. 

A holistic, defensive security program is one that demands continuous improvement, and it requires careful attention paid to laying solid foundations. If those foundations are predominantly tools-based, chances are good that maturity levels are lower than security leaders are banking on. A study by the Ponemon Institute revealed that 53% of enterprises were not confident that their security tech stack could effectively stop breaches, and with human error a leading cause of successful cyberattacks on companies great and small, leaving developers out of a strategic security uplift is playing with fire. 

Make developers the driving force of software security excellence

The uncomfortable truth surrounding cyberattacks is that, in almost every instance, attackers are at a distinct advantage over their target enterprise, no matter where they are in their security maturity journey. They have the time, tools, and motivation to meticulously scan for any weakness to exploit, dedicating themselves to breaking through and reaching paydirt.

Organizations, on the other hand, are juggling business and customer needs, and while they can’t afford the immense risk of a showstopping cyberattack, it is not practical for business operations to slow to a crawl in order to accommodate an abundance of security controls that may end up obstructing performance. This is where security-skilled developers represent an X factor in cyber defense outcomes.

While it is long established that, traditionally, developers have not been enabled to share the responsibility for security in a meaningful way, this can and must change for the better. Organizations can create viable upskilling pathways for the development cohort, but they need to select education options that deliver relevant course material in ways that make sense in their world. At a minimum, it should be conveyed in the languages and frameworks they actively use, and address the vulnerabilities they are most likely to encounter in their codebase. 

When courses are structured with the developer’s workflow in mind, there is a far greater likelihood that the poor coding patterns that perpetuate common vulnerabilities and misconfigurations can be replaced with good, safe patterns that significantly increase software quality over time. Low-quality software cost the United States $2.41 trillion this year alone, and this can only be remedied by breaking the cycle of errors that sustain risky technical debt.

It takes an organization-wide commitment to a more positive, holistic security program; one that harnesses the people power required to make a difference in people-driven issues. And if staying out of tomorrow’s headlines is essential, it’s certainly worth the effort.