Organisations are struggling to deal with six cyber security pain points, but there is hope out there, says AJ Thompson, CCO of the IT firm Northdoor plc, pictured.
Analyst firm IDC has predicted that global security spend will reach $219 billion this year and will grow to $300 billion in 2026. These are incredible figures and show that businesses are taking the threat of cybercrime seriously and spending huge amounts on trying to protect themselves.
However, the nature of the threat from cybercriminals means that attacks are increasing in number and complexity all of the time which means that some of the investment made is quickly negated. With the next year likely to be another record breaking one for attacks, high-profile data breaches and ransomware attempts, businesses are facing a number of challenges. There are six key challenges facing businesses, however, there is hope, with innovative solutions making a real difference to keeping data safe and cybercriminals out.
1.Security fatigue
The figures from IDC show that there is serious investment in security tools. However, the number of tools being invested in and the sheer weight of attacks is having a damaging impact on staff. Many attacks succeed not because a tool has failed to raise an alert, but because the alert was missed or ignored.
This happens because some tools are constantly sending alerts and warnings leading to security fatigue in staff. One warning becomes merged into the noise of many which means that when a serious alert is sent it can easily be lost or ignored.
Some solutions are designed to work with business’s existing tech stack to monitor its environment ensuring proactive and dynamic detection with a rapid response to threats, intrusions and attacks. However, the organisation only receives timely and actionable intelligence from a team of expert security analysts, ensuring that there is no constant noise of warnings and alerts.
2.Skills gaps/staff shortages
Finding, training and most importantly retaining cybersecurity talent has always been a huge challenge for companies. It is estimated that there is a cybersecurity workforce gap 3.4 million people which can only mean that there is a significantly increased risk of breaches across the board. The problem was not helped by the ‘Great Resignation’ of 2021, where 80 percent of companies were unable to fulfil their target headcount for security staff.
However, there are security ‘concierge services that allow businesses to add to their existing security teams, or if they are without a team at all, gain instant access to security experts that are able to monitor security events. This approach means that there is reduced pressure on companies to find and retain security talent and reduce the pressure on existing IT/security teams.
3.Identifying vulnerabilities and security gaps
The sophisticated and regular attacks from cybercriminals means that identifying where vulnerabilities and security gaps might lie is increasingly hard, especially on already taxed security teams.
Often even the basics can be difficult to obtain. Identifying what assets exist, which systems have vulnerabilities and which systems are misconfigured are all critical to plugging gaps in security. However, these are increasing hard to track down against a background of increasing growing attack surface compounds. The introduction of new digital initiatives, adoption of IoT, adoption of cloud and remote or hybrid working practices are all helping businesses move forward, but also increasing their exposure to threats.
Bringing on a managed security partner can allow you to discover, assess and harden your environment against cyber threats, as well as providing 24/7 monitoring vulnerabilities, system misconfigurations and more.
4.Increasingly complex regulatory landscape
Compliance and regulation are important parts of almost every business and particularly those where valuable data is held (healthcare, insurance, finance and public sector). Even for those companies that don’t lie within such heavily regulated industries the need to adhere to privacy laws and GDPR is now fundamental to their everyday business.
The regulatory landscape is becoming increasing complex placing more pressure on already overworked IT teams. Whilst, adhering to the various regulations does not guarantee that you are safe from attack, it does give you a solid foundation for security practices. The result of being found to be non-compliant means you are less secure, has the potential to have a huge impact on reputation as well as fines and other penalties.
Often the expertise needed to ensure compliance does not sit within the IT or management group, therefore bringing in a managed security service team takes away the pressure on existing teams and helps to ensure compliance.
5.The weakest link – human error
The weakest link in most companies’ security practices are the staff. Human error remains the main reason for a majority of breaches and with the increasingly levels of sophistication this is not going to get any better.
Cybersecurity training is often too inconsistent especially in light of the ever-changing threat landscape. However, changing your employees from the weakest to the strongest link is the key to making a significant difference in protecting data. Through fun, fresh and importantly, constantly updated microlearning sessions, companies are able to address the most common cyber threats by influencing staff behaviour and fostering a security culture.
6.Increasing threat, increasing solutions, increasing complexity
The nature of the increasing threat from cybercriminals means, as we have seen that businesses are investing more than ever in cyber defences. Trying to keep pace with the ever-changing threat landscape can however, have the opposite effect. By implementing increasing amounts of cybersecurity solutions means that there is increased complexity within your systems thus reducing the effectiveness of them and your IT team. The integration process itself is a time-consuming and complex task which can only be accomplished if your tools are interoperable, and takes your team away from other, business-critical tasks.
Simplifying this process is key to success. By implementing a vendor-agnostic managed service tool, companies can be confident that not only will it work with your existing tech stack, but also immediately provide a monitoring and response service. This helps not IT teams but not further complicating the process but rather taking some of the responsibility from them.
Such tools can provide real-time, continuous monitoring and threat hunting to your network. Alongside this, the predictable monthly cost is far below what companies spend to stand-up their in-house security operations centre.
