The average organization’s threat surface is expanding, and cyber threats keep evolving. A strong foundation built on proven technology is crucial in helping humans to protect their organizations from cybercrime. However, IT leaders must be judicious in selecting and implementing technology, taking care not to purchase every type of software that comes along.
In fact, according to the 2019 Cybersecurity and Threat Preparedness Survey, when security and IT professionals were asked to rank their organization’s largest pain points when dealing with cybersecurity, more than 75% of respondents cited the increasing complexity of their cybersecurity tech stack as a pain point or major pain point.
Leveraging Current Investment
Cybersecurity solutions are a significant investment and often well worth the expense if correctly configured and used in cooperation with each other. Before spending on more tools, it’s important to ensure that an existing security deployment is used properly.
Many major incidents and data breaches occur not because the target doesn’t have the tools needed to prevent them but because those tools aren’t used properly. In many cases, optimizing an existing cybersecurity investment pays better dividends than spending more on additional tools.
Network Design and Product Placement
The first place to look when trying to improve a current cybersecurity investment is an organization’s network design and the placement of security devices within the network.
Most security devices work at a certain point on the network, analyzing the data that passes through that point. As a result, they’re typically placed at bottlenecks within the network, like where the internal network connects to the Internet.
Robust cybersecurity requires ensuring that every security device is placed to provide maximum impact. The network evolves and changes over time, and what might have been an optimal security deployment at one point may have blind spots in the current network.
Periodically reviewing network design and security device placement can help ensure that an organization is maximizing the effectiveness and impact of its security investment.
Device Monitoring and Response
One of the most common mistakes that organizations make regarding their security solutions is setting up their devices and then setting them aside. When it comes to cybersecurity, an organization cannot afford to “set it and forget it”.
While modern security solutions are able to identify a wide variety of different attacks, they are typically designed to inform a human operator so that they can take action. If the security team isn’t monitoring tool output and responding appropriately, then the security tool has limited impact.
Unfortunately, security monitoring goes beyond the 9-to-5 job. The global nature of the Internet means that cybercriminals can and will attack at any hour of the day. If an organization doesn’t have 24/7 monitoring and response capabilities for its security team, the delay in detecting and responding to potential threats can cause dramatic increases in the damage caused and its associated costs.
Data Aggregation and Analysis
One of the most common issues facing organizations’ cybersecurity teams is an overwhelming deluge of data. Every security device deployed on an organization’s network can and probably does produce a large amount of log and output information describing what it is seeing on the network and how it may be an indicator of an attack.
As a result, most organizations have more security data than they can manage. Ignoring or inadequately investigating alerts can lead to security breaches.
Using a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution and configuring it to support the workflow of the organization’s security team can help ensure that the organization’s security deployment is operating at full effectiveness.
Improving Your Security Effectiveness
If you are not making full use of your current security investment, you are not alone. Designing, implementing, and operating a full-scale security deployment can be a complicated task and requires a fair amount of security knowledge and experience to do properly.
If you feel you have an opportunity to optimize your current security investment, reach out to Avertium for a consultation. With experience in deploying and operating security solutions in a variety of different environments, Avertium’s team can help you maximize the impact of your current cybersecurity investment.
