The What, Why, and How of Cybersecurity Staff Augmentation
Cybersecurity is an essential component in any IT organization. But staffing a security team with the right talents is more challenging than ever due to high hiring costs and labor shortages. That’s why more companies turn to cybersecurity staff augmentation to help them overcome these challenges. Here’s what you need to know about cybersecurity staffing and how to maximize your investment.
What Is Cybersecurity Staff Augmentation?
Security staff augmentation uses external resources to supplement your IT department with cybersecurity professionals. It allows you to customize and scale your security team to monitor, detect, investigate, and respond to threats while staying agile in today’s business environment.
You can use cybersecurity staffing services to fill skill gaps in different areas to perform preventative maintenance, continuous proactive monitoring, alert ranking and management, threat response, recovery and remediation, root cause investigation, security refinement, etc.
What Are the Benefits of a Cybersecurity Staffing Solution?
Cybersecurity staff augmentation gives you access to security experts with specific knowledge whenever you need them. You can scale your security capabilities to stay nimble while relieving the pressure on your internal IT team by delegating specialized or time-consuming tasks.
Staff augmentation can also help you reduce the cost of hiring and maintaining an in-house team. Your service provider will perform screening and onboarding so you can access talents with the right skillsets and hit the ground running from day one. Your staffing agency will also take care of administrative tasks such as payroll to help you reduce overhead expenses.
What Roles Can a Cybersecurity Staffing Solution Fill?
Cybersecurity is a complex and fast-evolving discipline. A staffing service can help you quickly adapt to the threat landscape by accessing the right talents at the right time. Here are the essential roles it can help you fill:
- Virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO): Architect your security program and oversee all the components.
- Analysts: Gather, organize, and interpret data to inform your security tactics.
- Auditors: Assess your IT infrastructure to ensure adherence to regulatory compliance frameworks.
- Technical writers: Compile reports based on data analysis and prepare documentation.
- White hat hackers: Perform penetration testing to uncover vulnerabilities in your systems and networks.
How Can You Best Leverage Cybersecurity Staffing Services?
Here are some of the most cost-effective ways to leverage a cybersecurity staff augmentation solution:
Build a Security Awareness Program
Employee education is an essential requirement in many regulations. A staff augmentation service gives you access to experts who can design an employee training program that incorporates the latest best practices, threat intelligence, and response procedures.
Support Compliance Audits and Reporting
Gathering data and compiling reports are time-consuming and labor-intensive. A staff augmentation service offers resources skilled at these tasks to help you meet complex auditing requirements without the cost of hiring a large in-house team.
Test Security Infrastructure
Augmenting your team with pen-testers can give you an unbiased view of your security posture as they thoroughly test your IT environment or technologies under development. These professionals have insights into the latest threat intelligence to ensure that you have covered all the bases.
Perform Data Breach and Crisis Management
Navigating a data breach requires all hands (and then some) on deck. Using a staff augmentation service is your best bet to access experienced professionals immediately to handle these urgent situations. You can respond quickly to intrusions, perform remediation, and minimize damages.
Manage Documentation Efforts
Creating technical documentation for your security and compliance measures is an essential but sometimes overlooked task. Instead of scrambling to compile documents at the eleventh hour (e.g., for a compliance audit), bring in a technical writer periodically to ensure that everything is up-to-date.
Support Product Development
When building a digital product, you may need specific cybersecurity knowledge at various stages of the development process to inform feature design or support testing. A staffing augmentation service can give you access to these talents while managing costs.
Find the Right Cybersecurity Staff Augmentation Service
Working with a reputable staffing agency that takes the time to understand your requirements and help you identify the appropriate resources is key to maximizing your investment.
Halexo offers a flexible and scalable staff augmentation model that gives you access to a wide range of top-tier talents to support long-term service delivery and one-off projects. Meanwhile, our process and structure ensure that the new team integrates seamlessly with your in-house staff for effective collaboration.
Learn more about our cybersecurity staffing solution and get in touch to see how we can help.