The CIO of a large financial services firm recently approached me for assistance in building out her company’s cyber-resilience strategy. Specifically, she knew that the firm was going to need to add an additional data center over the next year to meet growing demand, and she wanted to use that expansion as an opportunity to enhance the firm’s business continuity program. CDW provided the company with some practical advice to help draw this additional benefit from its investment.

While we were helping a very large organization expand an existing global footprint, the advice we shared is relevant across firms of all sizes. Let’s take a look at a few ways that all organizations can enhance cyber resilience.

IT is often underfunded in midsize businesses, and for the most part, IT teams focus their efforts on keeping things running, following the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That works well in most areas of infrastructure, but it can lead to disaster when applied to cybersecurity.

Fortunately, I’d encountered this situation before and was able to offer some advice based on my work with other customers. The company’s IT team could quickly ramp up its security capabilities by taking advantage of managed security services. These service offerings would enable the organization to gain the expertise of cybersecurity professionals without increasing the size of its own IT team. Instead, the company would depend on a managed service provider to augment its technology staff. The MSP would be able to spend more time on security than the company’s in-house professionals, and it could provide specialized expertise.

We looked at four areas where managed services could have an immediate impact on the company.

The election infrastructure in the U.S. depends on the coordinated, secure interaction of thousands of state and local election officials using very different technologies. These range from large cities with fully electronic voting systems to small municipalities that still rely on paper ballots. As I work with officials from these diverse election authorities, I’ve developed a set of best practices that will enhance security in any election environment. Let’s take a look at five key measures that every Board of Elections should put in place.

As a CDW field solution architect, I work with organizations across numerous industries as they grapple with the complexity of securing cloud computing environments. These environments range from full-scale public cloud deployments to internal private clouds, along with varying degrees of hybrid cloud. But whatever the technology, the security issues remain constant. We work with them to protect their data, applications and infrastructure against a wide range of threats.

Here are some key steps that you can take to secure your own cloud computing deployments.

Threat hunting has become an important cybersecurity practice. Building on the presumption that sophisticated attackers have already successfully penetrated many enterprise networks, threat hunting seeks to uncover evidence of these compromises, enabling a rapid response. While few of the organizations I work with are conducting threat hunting activities, many of them are talking about it….

Cybersecurity — one word that can inspire many different tactical approaches depending on its definition. If you feel overwhelmed by the idea of defining cybersecurity and developing a plan for its inclusion within your environment, then you’re not alone. Many organizations have started down the path of addressing exposure points, defining red and blue teams,…