10 best practices to improve security posture

The question isn’t if you will face a cyber threat, but when. The sophistication and volume of cyber-attacks, and the resulting risk of data breaches, continue to grow. A reactive approach to security is now obsolete and dangerous. Proactive defense is the new imperative. This requires building and maintaining a strong security posture.

This article will serve as your guide to understanding, evaluating, and enhancing your organization's cybersecurity posture. We will define what a security posture is, explain why it's critical for business survival, and provide ten actionable security best practices you can implement.

Key takeaways

• Your security posture is the overall strength and readiness of your organization's cybersecurity defenses against potential cyber-attacks. It provides a comprehensive view of your security status, including your policies, tools, and employee awareness.
• You cannot improve what you do not measure. A thorough security posture assessment is the first step you must take to identify security gaps and vulnerabilities in your current security strategy.
• A strong security posture is built on proactive measures. This means you must continuously monitor systems, conduct regular risk assessments, and commit to ongoing improvement.
• Effective security requires more than just technology. It demands a combination of the right security tools, solid processes, and well-trained personnel to create a resilient defense system.
• Modern security strategy shifts toward a "never trust, always verify" model. This framework greatly improves protection by assuming no user or device is inherently trustworthy.

What is security posture?

Your organization's cybersecurity posture is its overall cyber health. It's a comprehensive snapshot of your ability to prevent, detect, and respond to security threats.

Your security posture includes:

• People: The security awareness and training level of your employees.
• Processes: Your security policies, incident response plans, and access control rules.
• Technology: The security tools and configurations you use to protect your assets.

A weak posture, with numerous security gaps and vulnerabilities, is an easy target for attackers. In contrast, a strong security posture means your defenses are solid, monitored, and resilient against a wide range of attack vectors.

Why a strong security posture matters

Treat a strong security posture not just as an IT concern, but as a fundamental business priority. The consequences of a weak stance can be devastating. They extend far beyond a temporary system outage.

• The direct costs of a data breach can be crippling. These include expenses for remediation, fines and civil penalties (like GDPR or CCPA), and potential legal action. Indirect costs, such as operational downtime and lost revenue, add to the burden.
• Customer trust is hard-won and easily lost. A public data breach can erode confidence in your brand, which causes customers to take their business elsewhere. It can take years to rebuild that trust.
• Cyber-attacks like ransomware, which often aim to cause a data breach, can halt your operations entirely. They can prevent you from serving customers, processing transactions, or accessing critical data.
• For many companies**, intellectual property** is their most valuable asset. A breach could expose trade secrets, proprietary designs, or sensitive research to competitors or malicious actors.

A strong security posture is also a competitive advantage. It demonstrates to customers, partners, and stakeholders that you take cyber risk management seriously. This makes your organization a more reliable and trustworthy entity to do business with.

How to evaluate your security posture?

Before you can improve your security posture, you must first understand its current state. This begins with a security posture assessment—a systematic process that identifies and evaluates your organization's security readiness.

1. Identify and inventory assets. You cannot protect what you do not know exists. You must first create a thorough inventory of all your critical assets. This includes hardware (servers, laptops, mobile devices), software, and, most importantly, data. Classify data based on its sensitivity: public, internal, confidential, or restricted.
2. Identify security threats and attack vectors. Consider the potential cyber threats that could target your assets. These could range from external threats (phishing campaigns, malware) to internal threats like accidental data leaks or malicious insiders. Consider all possible attack vectors: the paths an attacker could take to breach your defenses.
3. Analyze vulnerabilities and security gaps. With your assets and cyber threats identified, search for weaknesses. Conduct risk assessments on your systems, processes, and policies. Are you using unpatched software? Do employees use weak passwords? Is sensitive data unencrypted? These are the security gaps attackers exploit.
4. Assess and prioritize cyber risk. The final step is to determine the level of cyber risk associated with each vulnerability, based on its impact and likelihood. A high-impact vulnerability that is easy to exploit must be your top priority. This analysis, the critical final step of your security posture assessment, forms the foundation of your roadmap to a strong posture.

10 security posture improvements

Once your assessment is complete, you will have a clear picture of where to focus your efforts. Here are ten essential security best practices to help you close security gaps and build a strong security posture.

1. Conduct regular security posture assessments

A security posture assessment is not a one-time project; it is a continuous process. Threats change, new technologies appear, and your attack surface expands. Schedule regular assessments at least annually, or quarterly for high-risk organizations, to keep your security strategy effective. This ongoing diligence is fundamental for a resilient defense.

2. Implement a comprehensive access control policy

The principle of least privilege (PoLP) must be the cornerstone of your access management. This principle dictates that users receive only the minimum level of access necessary for their job functions. Role-based access control (RBAC) is an effective way to apply this principle and assign permissions based on job roles rather than individuals. This drastically limits an attacker's ability to move laterally within your network if a user account is compromised.

3. Strengthen endpoint and device security

Every laptop, server, or mobile phone connected to your network is a potential entry point for attackers. Your strategy must include strong endpoint protection. Deploy and maintain endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools, antivirus software, and firewalls on all relevant devices. Furthermore, device posture security checks confirm that only compliant and healthy devices can access your network resources.

4. Prioritize employee security training

Technology alone cannot stop all threats. Your employees are your first line of defense, but without proper training, they can be your weakest link. Establish a continuous security awareness program that trains staff to recognize and report phishing emails, social engineering tactics, and other common security threats. Regular training is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve cybersecurity and build a security-conscious culture.

5. Develop an incident response plan

It's a matter of when, not if, a security incident like a data breach occurs. A well-documented and practiced incident response (IR) plan is essential to minimize damage. Your IR plan should clearly define roles and responsibilities and outline the specific steps for an incident:

• Containment: Isolate the affected systems to prevent the threat from spreading.
• Eradication: Remove the threat from your environment.
• Recovery: Restore normal operations safely.
• Post-incident analysis: Learn from the incident to prevent it from happening again.

6. Maintain rigorous patch management

Unpatched software and systems are one of the most common security gaps exploited by attackers. Vendors discover vulnerabilities in software all the time and release patches to fix them. Your organization must have a formal process to promptly test and deploy these patches, especially for critical systems. You can significantly reduce your window of exposure and increase security posture if you automate patch management where possible.

7. Secure your network with a Zero Trust approach

The traditional security model is no longer effective. A Zero Trust framework fundamentally shifts your security mindset to "never trust, always verify." This model assumes that threats can exist both inside and outside the network. Every access request is authenticated, authorized, and encrypted before being granted, regardless of its origin. This is the gold standard for a strong security posture.

8. Encrypt data at rest and in transit

Encryption renders data unreadable to anyone without the proper decryption key. It is a critical control to protect sensitive information. You must use encryption for:

• Data in transit: Data moving across your internal network or the internet (e.g., secured with TLS).
• Data at rest: Data stored on servers, databases, laptops, and backup media. Should a data breach occur, strong encryption can be the difference between a minor incident and a catastrophic data leak.

9. Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) everywhere

Compromised credentials are a common cause of cyber-attacks and data breaches. Multi-factor authentication is one of the single most effective defenses against them. MFA requires users to provide two or more verification factors to gain access to a resource, such as:

• Something you know (password or PIN).
• Something you have (smartphone or hardware token).
• Something you are (fingerprint or face scan). Enforcing MFA across all applications, especially for privileged access and remote access, is a simple yet powerful way to improve your security posture.

Enforce phishing-resistant MFA (FIDO2/WebAuthn) for all relevant accounts.

10. Adopt an SSE stack within a SASE roadmap

With remote work and cloud services, managing a fragmented collection of security tools can be complex and inefficient. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is an architectural framework that unifies networking and security services into a single, cloud-delivered platform. SASE simplifies management, provides consistent policy enforcement for all users regardless of location, and improves visibility. This unified approach helps eliminate security gaps and builds a scalable foundation for a truly strong security posture.

How NordLayer can help improve security posture

To achieve a strong security posture, you need a strategic blend of technology and policy. NordLayer provides an SSE solution that supports a SASE roadmap. It is designed to help organizations apply many of the best practices discussed above with ease and efficiency.

NordLayer allows you to improve your security posture:

• Implement a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) model. Use NordLayer’s ZTNA features for application-level access. Use Business VPN for use cases like site-to-site.
• Enforce Device Posture Security. With NordLayer, you can set security requirements that devices must meet before they connect to your network. This action ensures only healthy and compliant endpoints gain access. It also reduces the risk from compromised devices.
• Segment your network. Easily create virtual network segments to limit an attacker's lateral movement and contain potential threats. This ensures that even if one part of your network is compromised, the breach is isolated from your most critical assets.
• Secure all traffic. NordLayer encrypts all data in transit using AES-256 and ChaCha20. It protects your sensitive information as it moves between users, your offices, and cloud services.
• Centralize security management. Manage all your network access security policies from a single, intuitive Control Panel. This simplifies administration and reduces the chance of misconfiguration. It also provides full visibility over who accesses what, when, and how.

Do not wait for a cyber-attack to expose your vulnerabilities. Take a proactive stance: build a strong security posture starting today.