Emergency operations centers are a vital resource for state and local governments, and they are starting to expand to their next logical iteration: virtual EOCs. These online, often cloud-based centers allow remote stakeholders to see what’s happening at a brick-and-mortar EOC. Virtual centers can also serve as EOCs in their own right, providing a virtual space for stakeholders to coordinate and share information.

Interest in virtual EOCs and virtual access to EOCs predates the pandemic. However, the events of the past year have reaffirmed the importance of being able to bring stakeholders together remotely, as well as the value of collaborative, real-time data analysis. In addition, virtualization enables participants to maintain social distancing without compromising their ability to work together to manage a crisis.

Automating security operations, or SecOps, is one of the most powerful strategies organizations can employ to protect themselves and their data. All too often, however, they don’t leverage it as well as they could.

Security automation pulls together data from disparate systems to make information more visible and actionable. For example, a solution may not only alert IT teams to a critical vulnerability on enterprise devices but also initiate remediation. It could spot a vulnerability that can be solved with a specific patch, so staff members can determine the best way to solve the problem.

Here are a few of the ways organizations are putting SecOps to work, delivering greater efficiencies and peace of mind to their IT teams.

Late last year, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a new guidance document for cybersecurity incident response: Technical Approaches to Uncovering and Remediating Malicious Activity. This marked a major moment in cybersecurity guidance because it wasn’t just the work of CISA’s U.S. authors. It was a joint effort that represents the consensus guidance of cybersecurity experts from the governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

As organizations struggle to combat the steadily increasing risk posed by ransomware, business email compromise and other threats, this international consensus provides important guidance on the best ways to prepare for, detect and respond to malicious cyberattacks, and how to avoid common pitfalls. Let’s take a look at five key takeaways from the guidance.

Let‘s face it: Cybersecurity teams are overwhelmed with work. There simply is not enough time in the day to perform all the high-value tasks they are responsible for, such as consulting with project teams, conducting risk analyses and developing strategic security plans. To make matters worse, security teams often find themselves consumed with time-sensitive and repetitive operational work. Anything they can do to reduce this burden increases their ability to add value to the organization.

Automation has the potential to help with this heavy lifting. Any time security teams find themselves performing work that requires following a repetitive process, it is likely that automation can play an important role in reducing the operational burden. In our work with CDW customers, we have found a few common areas where automation can help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of cybersecurity teams. Let’s look at a few examples.

In the world of risk management, we spend a lot of time preparing for the unexpected, because we know that unexpected events will inevitably occur. This mindset colors everything we do in our professional careers and often spreads to our personal lives as well. I’ve endured eye rolls from my children when I forced them to participate in fire drills, what-if disaster scenario discussions and other preparedness exercises. But I know that thinking through how we would handle a surprising situation in advance arms us with a plan of action should it actually occur.

Does your organization have a plan of action in the event of a major cybersecurity incident? Sure, you likely have an incident response plan sitting somewhere on a shared drive, but is it covered in digital cyber dust, or is it an active document that the team embraces as part of a daily routine? Regular practice helps keep your plan fresh and your team prepared to spring into action at a moment’s notice. CDW offers two services designed to shake that cyber dust off of your plan.

As part of CDW’s cybersecurity team, I often have the opportunity to visit with our customers and help them identify gaps in their security programs. CDW offers a variety of security assessments that help organizations shore up their cybersecurity weaknesses.

I’ve performed dozens of these assessments, which provides me with a unique vantage point on the state of cybersecurity across different industries and organizations of various sizes. With that perspective, I’ve seen four common threats that continue to pose significant risk to cybersecurity programs.