How to leverage the power of cyber fusion centers for organizational security

Cyber fusion centers provide advanced security capabilities. Learn how your organization can strengthen its cyberdefense mechanism through a cyber fusion center.

With the rise in the cost of data breaches across the globe, the cybersecurity industry is resorting to a more comprehensive defense intelligence paradigm. The comprehensive defense intelligence would be a cyberdefense system that helps address the challenges of the ever-evolving threat environment. This defense system is what is referred to as a cyber fusion center.

Cyber fusion centers are set up to integrate processes, people and powerful technologies to address cybersecurity challenges. They provide comprehensive insights into malware, threat actors, vulnerabilities and threat intelligence to security teams in organizations. Hence, more organizations now seek ways to leverage the power of cyber fusion centers to give them deeper visibility into the threat landscape and help them with swift solutions to security issues.

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What is a cyber fusion center?

Cyber fusion centers (CFC) are unified and advanced security operations centers (SOCs) that enhance and improve enterprise security by devising a holistic approach to threat detection, hunting, response and threat intelligence.

The purpose of cyber fusion centers is to incorporate different teams such as SecOps, ITOps and NetSecOps within an organization to function as one team with an overarching goal of fast-tracking incident response and gathering security intelligence. This center helps to reduce risk and security costs by detecting security threats before they become disastrous to organizations.

Benefits of cyber fusion centers in organizations

There are many reasons enterprises must consider having cyber fusion centers to oversee their cybersecurity operations.

Unifies security operations

Cyber fusion centers allow enterprises to bring cybersecurity operations under one unit. For quality and swift response to threats and vulnerabilities, security specialists in the areas of threat hunting, incident response, vulnerability management, etc. should be put under one team of specialists.

Offers advanced-level security

The coming together of different security professionals under one unit drives an unprecedented level of threat visibility, intelligence and collaboration across security units. This often provides advanced-level security where every professional in the system is expected to contribute to bolstering expert-driven and security intelligence response.

Helps in faster decision making

Cyber fusion centers help organizations make faster security decisions due to the high level of collaboration the center offers. Unlike a system where cybersecurity teams are mixed with senior- and junior-level developers, penetration testers, incident responders and more, cyber fusion centers are an assemblage of security experts united in continuous collaboration and intelligence sharing. Thus, making security decisions based on expertise rather than guesswork is easier.

Helps organizations to understand threat situations in real-time

A cyber fusion-based strategy enables firms to better understand and assess the threat environment in real time. By giving them more visibility into the actions and strategies of their attackers, this understanding of the threat landscape enables organizations to go from a level of theoretical knowledge to an advanced level of understanding of how to respond to security risks before they get out of control.

Essential components of a cyber fusion center

There are several components that make cyber fusion centers a formidable and reliable think-tank for organizations’ cybersecurity needs.

Strategic threat intelligence

This kind of threat intelligence outlines mitigation techniques that can guide an organization’s decision-making process while providing relevant information in a clear-cut way. Strategic information comprises past threat patterns, motives, or essential elements of an attack that assist organizations in seeing the broad picture and setting cybersecurity goals accordingly.

Threat response

Security teams can effectively address attacks thanks to automated data and orchestration, which speeds up investigation, prioritizes threats and resolves events more quickly.

Technical threat intelligence

Technical threat intelligence is information derived from threat data. This could include information and data about the type and level of attack, vector and control domains used in an attack.

Security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR)

SOAR enables security teams to handle incidents with automated workflows. Doing this helps them to efficiently manage delicate security tasks, get insights into threat campaigns, map out the paths taken by possible attackers and identify threat patterns on time. The combination of the four elements mentioned above makes cyber fusion formidable.

Governance and compliance

Cyber fusion centers also help organizations ensure all IT and security activities align with regulations and compliance needs.

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4 tips when building a cyber fusion center

Now that it’s glaring that cyber fusion centers are critical to cyberattack containment, below are the factors to consider when setting up a cyber fusion center.

Identify redundancies and streamline operations

Before setting up a cyber fusion center, ensure existing systems that perform similar roles are merged into a unit. Removing such redundancies in multiple units will help cut costs and improve efficiency.

Set a pattern for actionable intelligence

It’s crucial to identify new patterns that will enable a seamless fusion between various experts before setting up a cyber fusion center. In addition, a comprehensive policy should detail how the team functions and communicates to the rest of the organization.

Put a channel of communication in place

Maintaining open lines of communication is essential for creating a powerful feedback loop within the cyber security fusion center. Also, provide technological systems that support the flow of information within teams.

Having the right people in place

Ensure you have the right people to handle your organization’s professional demands of cyber fusion centers.