Cybersecurity Consulting Firms

How We Rank the Best Cybersecurity Companies

We ranked these companies to help you select the right vendor for all your cybersecurity needs. This required us to evaluate a long list of companies in great detail before choosing the very best that satisfied all the right criteria. We evaluated each company’s proficiency by examining the following:

The Company’s Website

The first stage of our evaluation takes us to each cybersecurity consulting firm’s website, where we look for the following:

• The size of the company and its history on the market
• The company’s specific industry or client focus, if any
• The company’s portfolio of past projects, including case studies;
• An overview of the services offered by the company
• Team certifications — the more prominent examples expected for the top cybersecurity companies are as follows:
  
  • Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) – offered by the International Council of E-commerce Consultants (EC-Council)
  • Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) – offered by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA)
  • Security+ – offered by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA)
  • Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) – offered by the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2
  • GIAC Security Essentials (GSEC) – offered by the Escal Institute of Advanced Technologies
    Certified Protection Professional (CPP) – offered by ASIS International

Service Evaluation

These companies may offer different types of services. On our cybersecurity companies list, you’ll note that they might not offer every possible service falling under the cybersecurity umbrella. This is because the variety and number of services a company offers don’t determine its rank on the list, although it does help us classify it. However, these companies’ rankings are based on how they execute the services offered and what practices they employ in the process.

Cyber Risk

Broadly speaking, cyber risk is the risk of any financial loss, disruption, data theft, or damage to an organization’s reputation because of some kind of failure of its information technology systems. The most common sources of cyber risk include hacking, phishing, ransomware, hacktivism, and the loss of devices like laptops and smartphones. Cybersecurity consulting services should be able to assist you in combating most, if not all, of these different types of cyber risks. However, in providing cyber risk protection, the company’s skill set must encompass the following:

Wargaming

This is a way to detect a system’s vulnerability by gaining access to it in the same manner a hacker with ulterior motives would. Cybersecurity experts utilize a range of hacking techniques — including semantic URL attacks, password-cracking, software reverse engineering, SQL injections, and IP address spoofing — to test a system’s robustness.

Security Roadmap

A security roadmap is a tool used by cybersecurity companies to make a cybersecurity program more effective overall by aligning security processes with business goals. It can reduce the time, effort, and money spent on managing security and can even help decrease the number of security events teams have to handle. The key steps in this process are assessing the business risks, using these insights to create a security strategy, and then planning the implementation, security testing, and risk management.

Automated Compliance

Organizations, especially those that handle sensitive information, need to adhere to a set of rules and standards to protect customer information. These compliance policies vary greatly based on the industry, the computing platforms used, and other factors. Leading cybersecurity companies will set up automated compliance. This uses automated workflows to set processes in such a way that they always comply with the required standards. This not only reduces the chance of incurring non-compliance fines but also ensures that customers trust you and there’s an audit trail in case something goes wrong.

Cyber Defense

Cyber defense is a mechanism that protects your critical information infrastructure by focusing on preventing, detecting, and quickly responding to attacks or threats. To do this effectively, the best cyber security companies develop an understanding of the specific environment, analyze its possible threats, and then devise the strategies needed to counter the malicious threats. These strategies can include making the environment less appealing to attackers, recognizing critical locations and sensitive information, enacting preventative controls, and strengthening capabilities for attack detection and response.

Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation

CDM is a dynamic approach to fortifying an organization’s cybersecurity using industry-leading tools to counter threats as they continue to change. In this process, the IT security companies deploy sensors to perform an ongoing, automated search for known cyber flaws. The results from these sensors are fed into a dashboard that produces customized reports to alert network managers of the most critical cyber risks. Prioritized alerts enable experts to allocate resources based on the severity of the risk. The key advantages of CDM are that it delivers near-real-time results, prioritizes the worst problems within minutes, and allows cybersecurity consulting firms to identify and mitigate flaws at network speed.

Attack Surface Reduction

The attack surface is the sum total of the resources in the enterprise that are exposed to external attack. The use of technologies like cloud computing has blurred the well-defined perimeters of the attack surface, increasing the importance of minimizing the opportunities available to cybercriminals. Attack surface reduction typically involves eliminating any unnecessary complexity, visualizing vulnerabilities, keeping control over endpoints, segmenting the network, and maintaining continued analytics.

Defensive Cyberspace Operations

Defensive cyberspace operations (DCO) are passive and active operations carried out to preserve the ability to use friendly cyberspace capabilities and protect the data, network, and overall system. When carrying out these operations, internet security companies actively hunt for advanced internal threats within the network as well as take countermeasures to detect and defeat imminent threats currently outside the network.

Incident Response

In cybersecurity, having a plan to respond to incidents like DDoS attacks and malware infection is as important as defensive measures to reduce the likelihood of such threats. When your chosen network security company institutes this process, it becomes an overall business function that requires collaboration with the legal, human resources, and public relations departments as well. This involves creating an incident response plan to minimize an incident’s fallout. Although you can choose one of the leading data recovery companies, it’s always a better idea that you go for a company that invests in preparing staff, identifying the incident’s severity, containing the damage, eradicating the root cause and the affected parts of the system, recovering the affected parts, and analyzing the lessons learned — all under one roof.

Network Security

Network security involves protecting corporate networks from unwanted intrusion and works as a complement to endpoint security, which is concerned with individual devices. The top cybersecurity companies have network security analysts and engineers proficient in the following methods:

• Access Control – This refers to blocking unauthorized devices and users from accessing the network, and it prevents permitted users from working outside the limited set of resources they’ve been authorized for.
• Anti-malware – This prevents an imminent infection and removes any malware that has already found its way into the network.
• Application Security – Any insecure applications likely to carry threats onto the network are locked down.
• Behavioral Analytics – Understanding normal network behavior helps network security companies notice any anomalies.
• Data Loss Prevention – This requires implementing technologies so that employees don’t inadvertently or deliberately send critical data outside the network.
• Email Security – Here, email security tools are deployed to both prevent incoming phishing attacks and protect outgoing messages with sensitive data. There are a plethora of dedicated spam filtering experts out there, but on our list, you will find plenty of companies that offer such services.
• Firewalls – These establish a barrier between the trusted zone of your network and the area outside of it.
• Intrusion Detection and Prevention – Network traffic is scanned to identify and block attacks. This can also be done by one of the best big data specialists, but here, you can find plenty of cybersecurity firms that offer it too.
• Mobile Device and Wireless Security – This involves scrutinizing the wireless devices employees bring into the organization’s network that might connect with unsafe external networks.
• Network Segmentation – The software-defined segmentation of a network into different categories makes enforcing security policies easier.
• Security Information and Event Management – Information is pulled together from a variety of network tools to provide the data needed to identify and respond to threats.
• Virtual Private Network (VPN) – This is a tool for authenticating communication between a device and a secure network, creating a secure, encrypted “tunnel” across the open internet.
• Web Security – This involves controlling employees’ internet use to block any web-based threats that use browsers to infect the network.

Cybersecurity Consulting

We don’t consider it mandatory for every company to offer all the following types of consulting services. However, if they do claim to provide one, they need to do it in the right manner, as described below:

Information Protection Consulting

Given the manner in which data is used today, these services need to extend from traditional on-premise solutions to wireless and cloud environments, too. Effective information protection consulting incorporates two critical elements:

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP) – For data loss prevention solutions to be truly effective, cybersecurity consulting firms must go beyond a technology-focused outlook and incorporate improved employee security awareness and education. Moreover, a data loss prevention program should be scalable and dynamic to keep up with the organization as it grows. 
• Validation and ID Protection (VIP) – This aspect of information protection ensures that the information system is accessed only by authorized people and that their credentials aren’t hacked into by unauthorized agents. This incorporates some of the factors covered above, like extending the focus to employee education and ensuring scalable implementation.

Threat Protection Consulting

This involves the consulting team working closely with clients to design and implement business-specific solutions that increase threat visibility. Doing so provides a better chance of defending the enterprise’s most valuable information assets. Threat protection consulting needs to touch on each segment of a threat’s life-cycle and include elements like endpoint management and protection, data center security, custom scanning solutions, and managed security services.

Cybersecurity Training

Employees are often the chief vectors of malware into an organization’s network. This isn’t done with any deliberate intent to harm their employer. In the absence of proper training, most employees fall prey to the sneaky, continuously evolving tactics used by cybercriminals. This makes workforce training a critical component of cybersecurity. The training networking security companies provide can be a combination of modes like seminars, webinars, on-premise sessions, newsletters, and more, but it should consider the following best practices:

Involve the Entire Organization in Cybersecurity

Instead of limiting it only to your IT team, make cybersecurity awareness training mandatory for every member of the workforce who comes into contact with the organization’s information systems. Actively involving the workforce in protecting the company’s assets increases the likelihood of them taking ownership of their obligations and responsibilities.

Integrate Cyber Security into the Corporate Culture

If cybersecurity is seen as something foreign or highly technical, it puts employees off. Top internet security companies should help you secure practices second nature by using powerful learning management systems, incorporating tools like gamification, and recognizing employees for security training achievements.

Make Cybersecurity Training Part of the Onboarding Program

For employees just beginning work with the organization, making them understand that secure practices are an integral part of company policy significantly reduces the chance of errors. This includes adding policies and rules about data protection and internet usage to the employee handbook.

Run Periodic, Unannounced Tests

It’s important to ensure that the knowledge shared with employees is retained. There are tools IT teams can use to send simulated phishing emails or test employees in other ways to see if they take the appropriate actions. 

Regularly Update and Repeat Cybersecurity Training Courses

These courses should incorporate knowledge of the different forms of threats and how to identify them, the importance of password security, policies related to email, the internet and social media, and protecting company data. However, since the nature of cybersecurity threats keeps evolving, these courses have to be updated to keep up.

Put a Plan in Place for When Employees Suspect an Attack

Top IT security companies should assist you to put together an incident response protocol, which utilizes the workforce’s knowledge base and leads to the quicker detection, elimination, and mitigation of a threat and any damage caused by it. One way to do this is to create a document that offers employees explicit steps to take in different threat scenarios.

Listen to Employee Feedback

Cybersecurity training for employees is important for any modern organization, but it shouldn’t interfere with the workforce’s regular functions. Cybersecurity procedures have to be designed in tandem with your employees’ needs.

Remember That Mistakes Will Still Be Made

Working with employees to improve their understanding of cybersecurity consulting and management won’t perfectly eliminate errors. Therefore, it’s always important to invest in robust systems and processes that act as another line of defense.

Client Feedback

We mentioned that one of the first steps in our evaluation involves visiting the cybersecurity consulting firms’ websites. This is also how we note the testimonials shared by each company’s clients. However, these testimonials aren’t enough. We look at the client reviews and testimonials found on other sites as well to determine the strong and weak points of every cybersecurity services company. As long as the positive reviews outnumber the negative ones, the company isn’t removed from our consideration.

Pricing & Value for Money

Cybersecurity consulting rates are usually higher than a typical IT technician, given that it's a specialized field. We look for companies that have pricing policies aligned with industry standards for the services they offer. Any drastic differences in pricing from the competition mean, we’ll remove the company from our list.

How to Hire the Best Cybersecurity Consulting Company for You

Even though we’ve handpicked these companies for you, not all of them will be the right partner for your business. As the final step of your journey, here’s a guide to help you shortlist the cybersecurity consulting services that suit your specific needs so that you can find the best one for yourself.

Outline the Work You Need to Have Done

Do you need cyber risk evaluation, threat protection consulting, or cybersecurity training programs? All of these are substantially different and not necessarily offered by all of the companies. Even within these service categories, you may have specific needs. For instance, you might want to focus on a particular kind of cyber threat. Shortlist the companies that have proven experience in the areas you want assistance in.

Look for Companies That Align with Your Business’s Size and Niche

Working with a cybersecurity firm that has experience working with businesses similar to yours in size and belonging to the same industry as yours are much likelier to deliver high-quality services and efficient, custom-tailored solutions. 

Define your Budget

It’s important that you define the amount of money you can afford to spend and look for cybersecurity consulting firms that align with your budget. Keep in mind that having a comprehensive cybersecurity program will pay off in the long run.