Your Cybersecurity New Years Resolutions

By Sabrina Walhout

With 2025 right around the corner, many of us are taking the opportunity to set ourselves some goals for the new year. Whether it’s working towards better health, becoming more mindful, or developing a new skillset, we at Zaviant believe there’s no better time than the present to set some New Year’s resolutions for your cybersecurity program.

Resolution 1: Improving Network Health

Just as we often take time in the beginning of the year to start building healthy habits such going to the gym, drinking more water, and eating healthier, developing healthy security habits is just as important.

Going to the doctor. Consider giving your network an annual check-up to ensure your systems are being utilized properly and that your environment isn’t open to unnecessary risks. Evaluating access controls, conducting CVE scans, and reviewing firewall configurations make excellent starting points to understanding how healthy your network really is.

Start exercising—literally. Many organizations benefit from security training ranging from Table Top exercises to Penetration tests. These exercises stress test your environment and incident response capabilities which can lead to better security practices and an ultimately safer network.

Building better routines. Ensuring you consistently work towards better security practices can seem daunting, but just as Rome wasn’t built in a day—neither are strong security routines. It takes consistent and continuous work to build a secure environment, including continuously asking—are our policies in line with best practices and how can we close that gap?

Resolution 2: Security Mindfulness

Adoption of a security mindset can often be the difference between an organization at greater risk of attack and one that isn’t. Going into the new year, think about the ways in which your organization can begin to change its approach to security practices.

The Five W’s. Good data privacy practices focus heavily on understanding the five basic W’s: Who, What, When, Where, & Why.  Knowing this information as it pertains to your data is critical to ensuring its protection. When data is at rest, in transit, or in use, consider the five W’s and whether or not any of these questions are going unanswered.

What can’t you afford to lose? Think about what information or resources your company considers the most valuable or sensitive. What are you doing to protect this data? As you make decisions that impact these resources, consider how these changes will protect this information, and what you can do to improve this.

Sharing is caring. Adopting a security mindset won’t help very much if you’re the only one adopting it. Encourage other members of your organization to also focus on adopting a security mindset, especially those handling sensitive or important information. Sharing security awareness through education, training, and open discussion can lead to the widespread adoption of strong security practices and an overall safer environment.

Resolution 3: Growing Technical Skills

With AI and quantum computing taking the spotlight in the technological revolution, now is the best time to consider familiarizing yourself with emerging and disruptive technologies that are not only relevant to your industry but spark your curiosity. As we head into 2025, think about how your organization can benefit from these big technology trends.

A-iRobot. 2025 promises to be a big year in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI).  Between the tech giants of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon—and the chip makers like Nvidia and AMD making their AI dreams come true, we can expect mass proliferation of AI resources from ChatGPT to Google Gemini. This ubiquity presents a unique opportunity for companies looking to further develop their knowledge base and leverage AI automation in their operations.

Do you want chips with that? With Google’s new Willow Chip, accessible quantum computing is closer than ever, but overall, 2024 has seen an evolution in high-powered chip development from makers like Nvidia, AMD, and IBM. These building blocks of computing power can offer a tremendous opportunity for organizations who want to turn the dial on data processing and automation.

Powered up. As computing demands continue to rise, so are the needs for the energy to provide them: Enter the revamped energy economy. With Microsoft planning to leverage nuclear energy from Three Mile Island, and the Virginia legislature projecting data center energy needs doubling in the next ten years, many organizations are reconsidering their energy consumption. Think of what will be your company’s energy needs in the three, five or ten years, and consider what ‘new’ energy resources you could benefit from.

Happy New Year, everyone!