Situational Awareness

Situational Awareness has been traditionally defined as "The perception of elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future". We at PragmaticDefence prefer to simplify and define Situational Awareness as "Knowing what is going on around you".

Cyber Security Situational Awareness

Cyber Security Situational Awareness (CyberSSA) is not such a new field in the way information about past, current and future threats to an organisation are displayed. Its origins are well founded in the battlefield strategies of national governments and are beginning to percolate into large global organisations.

But what is CyberSSA and why should we care about its presence (or lack of it) or its effectiveness? Today's organisations are being asked to do more with less, there are a myriad of external compliance schemes as well as organisations' internal governance necessary to meet executive board reponsibilities. Some of the top agenda items faced today by executives are:

  1. Demonstrating security value to the business
  2. Developing and communicating a security strategy that supports business objectives
  3. Complying with regulatory requirements (both internal and external)

So how could CyberSSA assist with these challenges and what should we expect of this “new” arena? The overarching tenet of CyberSSA is “knowing what is going on around you”. When applied to your organisation, this translates into being able to determine the security health of your environment, down to the endpoint.

Three Step Process

Pharos utilises Status Screens for quick viewing of data

The three steps to CyberSSA are:

  1. Collect – The process to quickly and effectively gather the necessary data for informed analysis.
  2. Analyse – The process of determining what is and is not important to the continuance of an organisation's stated business objectives.
  3. Visualise – Being able to represent the data collected and analysed in a format that a business requires.

This high level three-step process allows for CyberSSA to be easily understood across a whole organisation. It also allows for disparate business units to understand what the security department is aiming to do with “their” data, and the promised returns of enhanced visualisation and reporting specific to the business users needs ensure that for the first time security is ingrained into a business's objectives instead of being seen as a cost item in the Profit & Loss account.

Learn More

To learn more about how Pharos can improve CyberSSA in your organisation click here.