Fortinet advised IT leaders in India to sharpen their situational awareness skills in order to better defend their organizations against cyber threats.
Human beings are continually looking for knowledge or information to improve the situations they are in. If we live in a crowded city, for example, we want to know which routes are best to avoid getting stuck in traffic. When we enter a restaurant or cinema, we look for the exits. And when a suspicious looking person enters the room, part of our mind automatically keeps track of him. This behavior is known as situational awareness, and it is second nature to most of us.
“When people use IT, however, this behaviour surprisingly doesn’t carry over. They click on dubious links without a second thought, open files they don’t recognize, and connect to wireless networks they are unfamiliar with,” said Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC, Fortinet. “If people could become more situational aware in their handling of computing devices, they − and the organizations they work for − would be victimized by cyber threats much less often.”
Situation awareness in enterprise IT environments start with understanding the organization’s business priorities, risks and threats. IT leadersmust be able to frame the issues they are dealing with within short and long-term business objectives, have clear line-of-sight across the organization and technologies, and be able to establish policy and governance for everyone who touches the firm’s data.
