I have been on the receiving end of many vendor security assessments from customers and prospects. Here are some tips to increase the likelihood that you’ll get a timely, usable response to the next vendor security assessment that you send out.

Return on investment: is it worth the money? That is the central question both government and industry in deciding on any procurement. Demonstrating ROI on cybersecurity products is notoriously difficult and is one of the underlying reasons for the poor state of our nation’s cybersecurity posture.

Endpoint detection and response solutions – EDR as it’s more commonly known – act as enterprise surveillance and thus deliver a rich dataset to security professionals. But as with all advances in security, this rich data wasn’t always available in a speedy and cost-effective way. Yet, as a security professional in today’s always-on world, one of your key responsibilities is to efficiently leverage incoming data from every endpoint across your organization.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used all around us and if you’ve used some sort of voice activated technology to make your life easier, then there was likely some element of AI involved. Some of the most notable examples include Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Tesla semi-autonomous vehicles. Individual consumers no longer have to fumble around in the dark to flip the light switch at home, manually search playlists for songs, or type in a password to get into smartphones.

Effective information security management requires understanding the primary concepts and principles including protection mechanisms, change control/management, and data classification. However, those terms may feel overwhelming at first leading many businesses to follow compliance requirements blindly without fully understanding whether they effectively secure their systems, networks, and software.

With or without a security operations center, and whether your network is on premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid, you need to determine which events and indicators correlate with cyber attacks. Organizations these days face a wider range and greater frequency of cyber threats than ever before.

“The best defense is a good offense.” History credits Revolutionary War hero George Washington with being among the first to vocalize this concept, later famously echoed by heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey and football god Vince Lombardi. And it’s easy to see what they mean.

There are many rewards to being a world class cybersecurity solutions provider at a time when demand for effective solutions is exponentially greater than the existing supply – and getting greater by the minute. But, perhaps the greatest reward is to be asked to model best practices and product capabilities for the greater good of business and missions in a world class lab. Better yet, to collaborate with the most widely recognized standards body in the world to establish such a model.