It’s no secret: Information security is a complex and ever-changing world fraught with risk. But adding the most recent tools to your organization’s cybersecurity portfolio to try to mitigate new threats may be the wrong approach to security improvement. Today, it’s more important to focus on taking care of the fundamentals, which are too often eclipsed by the latest market developments. Patch management, solid access controls, and good hygiene are often given short shrift in a cybersecurity environment that grows more complex by the day.

Getting back to basics means reducing complexity. It means keeping applications, databases, and operating systems up to date and disposing of old, unsupported ones. It means ensuring that you’re getting the most from the tools you already have before investing heavily in new ones. It means establishing clear ownership and governance over data. Above all, it means doing the tireless work of promoting security awareness while also understanding that your people represent the front line of this defense.

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