A cyber security consultant is responsible for identifying problems, assessing and evaluating risks and implementing solutions to address risks related to a company’s computer networks and computer systems. Typically, cyber security consulting service addresses a specific need within the company or provides a fresh pair of eyes for evaluating a company’s security posture. Some common use cases for hiring a cyber security consultant will be to help prepare for and pass compliance audits, perform penetration testing/risk assessments on the company network or specific applications, and help the company recover from a recent data breach.
Once a cyber security consultant is hired, they use various software tools to identify problems, evaluate the risk and ultimately help the company implement a solution to fix that problem. When it comes to penetration testing, they will typically use tools that allow them to replicate the type of attacks that hackers are known to be used in the wild. This type of testing enables a company to get a realistic idea of how well its defenses will work against a real-world attack. For compliance audits, the cyber security consultants will typically use software that can evaluate the organization’s security controls against well-known benchmarks to ensure that the organization meets the level of security required to pass the audit successfully. Lastly, if they are helping an organization that has recently suffered a data breach, they will typically use forensics tools to help them identify the source of the data breach. Then, use re-imaging software to clean the infected systems before putting them back onto the network and use endpoint and network monitoring tools to ensure there is no reinfection of the systems following the hack.
The techniques and tools a cyber security consultancy uses will vary depending on the team’s expertise, but the overall goal remains the same. They are specialists you hire to help your company
1: Become more secure
2: Prepare for an upcoming audit
3: Recover from a data breach/hack
What are Cyber Security Services?
We talked briefly about some of the cyber security services that consultants offer, but in this section, we’re going to break down in detail some of the niches that cyber security consulting services can fall into:
Incident Response/Computer Forensics: These consultants specialize in helping companies prepare for cyber attacks and help companies that have recently suffered a cyber attack.
Cyber Threat Intelligence: These consultants provide intelligence related to cyber threat actors targeting companies with a similar profile to their clients or are directly targeting their clients.
Penetration Testing/Risk Assessment: Consultants in this area help companies evaluate the security of their infrastructure by performing controlled cyber attacks against the company’s network, systems and applications to uncover hidden vulnerabilities.
Compliance: In this speciality, the consultant will help companies achieve compliance with common security standards and regulations.
Security Awareness Training: In this area, the consultant will help the company train their employees to be resilient to phishing attacks and data privacy malpractice. They also help to conduct simulated phishing campaigns to test their clients’ employees and identify any weaknesses in the company’s security awareness training program.
Managed cyber security services: This is a service model in cyber security consulting where a company is engaged to monitor and manage security devices, systems and software-as-a-service (SaaS) Applications.
Cyber Security Consultant Roles and Responsibilities?
A cybersecurity consultant’s role is to help clients improve their overall security posture. To do this, they must identify, evaluate and assess security risks.
To identify risk, the consultant can either use automated software such as a vulnerability scanner, risk management platform, etc. or manually test for the vulnerability using tools like Nmap, Metasploit or other offensive security tools. They can also rely on information provided by the client on the vulnerabilities they have and what needs to be fixed.
Once they have information on what risks exist, they need to evaluate them based on factors such as the risk of exploitation, potential impact on the company, ease of exploitation, exposure to the internet and others. Based on the overall likelihood of exploitation and the vulnerability’s potential impact on the client network, the consultant can determine which risks have the highest priority.
Once the priority has been determined, the consultant can create a prioritized plan of what risks need to be addressed first and which risks may not be worth addressing because it provides little or no potential for harm to the organization. Identifying, evaluating, assessing and then remediating risk is the cyber security consultant’s responsibility throughout their engagement with the client.
What are the benefits of cyber security?
Lower Downtime: The most significant benefit of good cyber security practices is that your business should have far less IT downtime as a result of computer hacks, which should save the business a significant amount of money.
Fewer Potential Fines: By maintaining compliance with industry and geographical regulations, your business will pay less fines due to non-compliance.
More Business Contracts: Many companies have security requirements for any company they share data or network access with. By having a good security program and demonstrating this, you enhance your ability to acquire more clients, especially government contracts.
How CG Technologies can help
A good cyber security consultant provides expertise in an area of cyber security that their client needs. Whenever a cyber security consultant is hired, they should leave the client’s environment much more secure than before they arrived. At CG Technologies, we have been helping companies be more secure for over 25 years. We provide cybersecurity consulting services to help you prevent loss of business data, unnecessary business outages, and compliance issues and most importantly, we help you protect your business from hackers.
Download our whitepaper on ransomware protection; if you would like some free information on how to protect your organization from ransomware attacks. If you’re interested in getting more personalized help with your organization’s security posture, you can contact us here for a free consultation.
