How do you maintain a healthy immune system? Not by living in continual fear of illness, or forever consulting doctors (although that may be comforting to some), but by pursuing wellness – fitness, nutrition, and physical and mental balance.

Likewise, in business, the goal is not simply to be reactive—to keep responding to problems as they appear—but to proactively develop and execute strategies that prevent these problems from occurring in the first place. This is particularly important for IT and cybersecurity teams as, by the time a problem appears, it can often be too late.

Is your business approaching IT with a cybercrime mindset, where problems are to be feared? Or with a security-first mindset, where you focus on integrating best practices for improving the safety of your data? In this blog, we examine how IT teams can cultivate security best practices throughout the wider business and facilitate a culture shift from reactive to proactive.

“Major service provider suffers large-scale breach.” Headlines like this are so common now that they barely attract notice. Russia, China, and the U.S. regularly claim attacks against critical communications and energy grids, with election tampering and COVID misinformation the most recent alleged threats in fashion.

And other countries haven’t been spared. Take Australia, for example (the home of Megaport HQ). In October 2022 alone, hackers targeted a platform containing sensitive Department of Defence data, health insurer Medibank suffered a data breach affecting nearly 10 million customers, and AFP classified documents were leaked, exposing agents fighting drug cartels.

With so many types of cybercrime rampant around the world (from critical utility sabotage, to cryptocurrency fraud, to ransomware), the cybersecurity market is projected to grow from 155.83 billion USD in 2022 to 376.32 billion USD by 2029. The challenge is ongoing – and it affects everyone. So how can IT teams shift an entire business’s mindset toward maintaining cybersecurity best practices to help protect the business at large?

Many times, cybersecurity issues arise not because of technology gaps or system defects, but because of carelessness or ignorance on the part of employees – most often those not working in or adjacent to IT.

According to IBM, “human error was a major contributing cause in 95% of all breaches.” This is not to necessarily blame employees, but highlights a need to focus not just on technology but also workplace culture and behaviors.

Here are some practices you can adopt to proactively make your workplace culture more cybersecure.

Prior to any other step, every organization should conduct their own business impact analysis (BIA) and risk assessment. This ensures that IT and cybersecurity team activity is aligned to the goals of the business and understands the priority areas to maintain and secure. Make this a continual practice, and don’t leave it purely to the IT department – all areas of management should be involved.

Weaknesses in business processes and procedures can occur outside of the IT team’s area of responsibility, which is all the more reason to maintain visibility and involvement of how businesses are creating, using, and sharing their data and information assets. This is also a great way to build collaborative relationships and a sense of ownership within organizations (with all the benefits of enhanced visibility and collaboration that may flow).

All cybersecurity starts with good IT governance. The following activities may be common knowledge to IT and cybersecurity teams but may not be to other non-technical teams. Even where it falls outside their purview, it is worth sharing these basic IT and cybersecurity goals with the wider business in order to communicate how and why your teams work to securely deliver IT services.

After conducting your BIA and risk assessment, do IT and cybersecurity teams understand business goals, constraints, and reasons how and why certain business processes are conducted? Which areas present the biggest concern? What changes are required to best protect against any weaknesses?

By assessing the risks in the context of the business goals, the IT and cybersecurity teams can devise practical and enforceable mitigations against threats. They can then plan a roadmap to implementing necessary changes that minimize disruption (and hopefully annoyance) to your staff. People will generally follow guidelines if they understand that there is reasonable purpose and alignment to business goals.

IT and cybersecurity teams engage best when available to discuss why certain guidelines are implemented and advise as necessary on the best way to implement or comply. This typically includes:

Ultimately, the purpose of IT is to enable the technology tools required to conduct business serving both the employees and your customers. IT and cybersecurity are more than a means to operate the business on a logistical level – but a hub of knowledge and support for others to perform their role. Technology permeates every aspect of your business.

To ensure everyone is engaged and supporting your initiatives, propose relevant, reasonable controls that solve clearly articulated problems instead of dictating requirements. Solicit and consider feedback regarding productivity and other potential business impacts. Integrate communications with operational and leadership discussions to maintain effective awareness and stakeholder feedback loops. Speak to the business partners in terms they understand and seek to understand the business. Recognise security champions and reward achievement. Employ relevant, and engaging, awareness and training in regular, consumable packages.

Crime is a fact of human societies around the world. Information technology and the Internet bring the world together in unprecedented ways, so it is inherently a medium for crime of many varieties, scales, and motivations. As a result, measures to prevent or minimize IT crime can feel like an endless game of cat and mouse.

Instead of considering cybersecurity as an obligation or roadblock, leverage your relationships with partners in the business to embed protections and good practice into the foundation of the business. Seize it as an opportunity to cultivate greater awareness and unity in achieving business objectives.

By curating continual assessment and awareness processes, you can quickly react to changes in the threat landscape and develop controls suited to your organization. By embedding processes and communication channels into other teams and business units you can develop, revise, and adapt policies, processes, and procedures that align with business objectives and constraints. By soliciting and considering feedback you get everyone involved – because that involvement is meaningful and genuinely helpful. Monitor the sentiment of your people, not just their completion of generic online compliance courses.

And ultimately, by not viewing cybersecurity as merely a cost and an inconvenience or, worse, as some hypothetical threat, your organization will be poised to meet the challenges presented by the continual change in technology.