Strategy and Implementation

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Strategy and Implementation

Good strategy enables organisations’ technological development and cyber security. However, developing a strategy is just the first step: strategy is nothing without execution. We help you develop a robust, realistic, and deliverable strategy and implementation plan with clear guidelines for all stakeholders to follow. This plan will be executed by your team, but with our experts on hand to advise and guide.

Understanding that strategy is only successful if implemented at all levels, we provide training and education to your staff so that they are well prepared to implement the plan.

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Giving you the strategy, the plan, and the training to succeed

Coherent action

Ensures efficient and effective delivery of the strategy by all stakeholders

Tailored outputs

Implementation plans that meet your threat, resource, and compliance needs

Empowered staff

Education and training that enables your staff to deliver a cyber secure organisation

Tech strategy

Good strategy helps organisations make difficult, committing decisions, and provides a clearly understandable route to deliver on those choices.

This sounds simple enough, but good strategy is notoriously difficult to develop. We work with you to understand the challenges facing your organisation, help you make the difficult decisions inherent in strategic delivery, and develop coherent strategic objectives to address these challenges.

A technology strategy is particularly useful for organisations that depend on technology to deliver their outputs (e.g. operational technology). It is also useful for when coherence is needed across multiple areas of the organisation, not just within the IT function.

Cyber implementation planning

A cyber implementation plan details how an organisation achieves its security outcomes. This should be informed by an overarching strategy.

The plan will be bespoke to the organisation and will depend on the threats faced, the resources available, and the compliance environment. Our programme describes the security outcomes you need to achieve and the plan to make them happen. This plan can then be implemented by your project managers with our support.

We can describe security outcomes using either CAF or NIST CSF terminology depending on your requirements. Longer term plans will be balanced with quick wins and urgent fixes. These may include creating a basic incident response plan, conducting a supplier review or addressing critical Data Protection issues.

Training and education

Delivering good cyber security requires two things: understanding the business and understanding cyber security. People within a business understand the former well but may have limited experience of cyber security. Our training and education packages aim to give your people the knowledge and skills they need.

These packages range from awareness sessions suitable for every employee to dedicated one-on-one training to upskill your existing security and IT staff.

Frequently asked questions

Good strategy helps organisations make difficult, committing decisions, and provides a clearly understandable route to deliver on those choices. A well-written strategy, endorsed at board level, will simplify implementation for those delivering its outputs. Almost all organisations are enabled by technology in some way so a coherent technology strategy can help maximise the effectiveness of current and future investments.

Our experts have written strategies that have successfully guided multi-million pound investments and multi-billion pound turnover organisations. These strategies are focused on the technology that enables, or will enable, that organisation and not solely about cyber security.

However, a strategy designed with cyber security in mind can make the subsequent implementation much easier from a security perspective. This can be as simple as ensuring buy-in from across the organisation, or defining the security principles that must be adhered to.

Strategies and implementation plans are products of the organisations that created them. Big, complex, and high threat organisations will therefore have ambitious strategies and thorough implementation plans. Simpler organisations, facing a low level of threat, will have achievable strategies and simple implementation plans. The scope and cost of developing strategy and implementation plans ranges hugely depending on the organisation.

No. While a good strategy can make implementing cyber security easier, it is not essential. For many organisations a technology strategy may not be necessary and they simply need a plan to achieve a good level of cyber security.

NIST CSF and CAF are collections of security outcomes. They do not tell you which outcomes you need to achieve and in what order. Most organisations do not need to apply all of NIST CSF and CAF to every system they use. A strategy and implementation plan will provide guidance on what needs to be implemented, in what order, and crucially why it is needed.