Gap Analysis: What Is It and Why Your Business Needs It

What you don’t know can hurt you.

It’s easy to fall into the habit of maintaining your current security picture if you’ve yet to suffer a breach. After all, the thinking goes, nothing bad has happened so far, so what’s the harm in continuing what you’re doing?

The problem is that not attending to flaws in your security infrastructure is a bit like ignoring the stack of old, brittle dictionaries sitting in front of the fireplace. One stray ember and everything you worked so hard to achieve can go up in flames.

You absolutely need to know, for the safety of both your brand and your customers’ data, where flaws might exist in your digital security picture. It’s only by identifying potential weaknesses that you can start correcting the problems and securing your organization’s long-term stability for years to come.

So where do you begin? With a gap analysis.

Gap Analysis: Defined

Let’s not overcomplicate the issue. A gap analysis is exactly what it sounds like. You’re identifying gaps in your business so you can fill in these gaps with improved systems and business best practices.

A gap analysis is typically conducted with an eye toward identifying where a business would want to be in the future. If you understand what you would like your security picture to be and every security measure it would take to get there, it becomes easier to see which areas are not up to par.

A cybersecurity gap analysis thereby takes a set of best practices for security and measures your current business practices against these criteria. If there’s a gap between where you are now and what a top-of-the-line security picture would be, this gap will be flagged for further investigation, review, and correction.

Hence: you’re analyzing the gaps in your security picture.

Why Your Business Needs a Gap Analysis

You can’t correct something that’s wrong if you don’t know that it’s wrong.

A gap analysis identifies areas for potential improvement within your current business state. Our experience is in the cybersecurity space, so the gap analysis we provide necessarily pertains to that. However, a gap analysis can be conducted within any aspect of a business.

It doesn’t even have to apply to a business unit that’s failing to live up to expectations. In fact, many successful businesses run gap analyses numerous times, across every aspect of the business, in order to reach a state of continuous improvement. If you’re constantly aspiring to reach a better future state, then when you attain those goals, you can set all new goals and continue to strengthen your strategy and optimize your business practices.

That’s why a gap analysis is so crucial: it not only helps you identify areas of deficiency, but it helps expand your horizons as well.

What Does a Cybersecurity Gap Analysis Entail?

For Logic Shield, the free gap analysis we provide to businesses looks at a number of things, all based on the Data Security Standards for PCI Compliance. We understand how important it is for a business to reach the thresholds required to remain compliant, and we want to show you what you need to do to get there.

What’s great about a cybersecurity gap analysis specifically is that the standards are basically set in stone by the PCI Security Standards Council, so it’s relatively easy to see where the gaps are (assuming you conduct the analysis correctly).

So with that in mind, a typical cybersecurity gap analysis may carefully explore things like:

• Hardware (computers, tablets, standalone POS systems, etc.)
• Software (including app-based POS systems, accounting, inventory, etc.)
• WiFi
• Antivirus protection
• Data handling and storage practices
• Data and systems access and protocols
• And more

Again, the idea is to identify areas that could be at risk of a breach, not for finger-pointing, but to map out what you’d need to shore up your security and protect your brand.

Want a Free Gap Analysis for Your Own Business?

Don’t just assume your business is safe because you haven’t yet become the victim of a cybersecurity breach.

Get a free gap analysis from Logic Shield to see precisely where you might be risking the exposure of customer data. We’ll quickly assess the health of your card-processing systems and highlight where there might be opportunities to improve your security.

Get started here.