Potentially ‘more security vulnerabilities’ with expanding Internet connections: study
The global attack surface continues to expand as new technologies and devices connect to the internet, meaning there are potentially more vulnerabilities and entry points for attackers to exploit. according to a new study published by the security company Tenable.
Scott McKinnel, country manager for Tenable ANZ, says that in fact there are 117,289 new hosts, 613 new domains and 375 new threats launched every minute around the world, and the growing number of IoT devices, cloud services and mobile devices, in particular, are contributing to this trend.
According to a new study published by Tenable, as the number of connected devices increases, the number of potential vulnerabilities also increases, and the problem of combating vulnerabilities stems from the fact that yesterday’s tools and processes are used. to solve today’s problems. – built and designed for the old age of computing when the cyberattack surface was a static laptop, desktop or on-premises server.
“As a result, organizations are struggling at every stage – seeing their assets, detecting weaknesses, prioritizing issues to fix, measuring risks and comparing themselves to their peers – preventing them from managing and reducing cyber risks safely. confidence. Clearly, in this new digital age, we need a new approach,” notes McKinnel.
“The most effective way to regain control of the ever-changing elastic attack surface is to be able to identify and assess every asset on any computing platform with live visibility. This enables organizations to understand their true level of exposure and proactively manage and reduce cyber risk.
“The cybersecurity industry needs to move away from traditional vulnerability management focused on providing customers with a list of vulnerabilities and embrace exposure management that helps customers understand where they are exposed, what that means from the point of view of risk and how they can effectively manage and reduce that risk.
“The majority of security leaders now understand that the explosion of data, the increase in the number of tools used, and operational silos have dramatically increased cyber risk. Yet security teams are challenged to keep up with the adoption of new solutions to manage various vulnerabilities, web applications, identity systems, and cloud assets. But the biggest challenge is to effectively analyze all the data generated from a mix of technologies to make informed decisions about which exposures pose the greatest cyber risk to the organization.
McKinnel. asserts that when cybercriminals assess an organization’s cyber defenses, they don’t think in terms of data silos; rather, they seek the right mix of vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and identity privileges that will give them the highest level of fastest access to the organization’s network.
McKinnel asserts that to be an integral part of any exhibition management program, a platform must offer three key features:
Complete visibility: A unified view of all assets and associated vulnerabilities (software, configuration, and entitlements), whether on-premises or in the cloud, is essential to understanding where an organization is at risk. An exposure management platform should continuously monitor the internet to quickly discover and identify all external assets and eliminate known and unknown security risk areas. This reduces the time and effort required for security teams to understand the full attack surface, eliminate blind spots, and establish a baseline for effective risk management.
Prediction and prioritization: An exposure management platform should help users anticipate the consequences of a cyberattack by leveraging the vast datasets available from various ad-hoc tools and providing context about the relationships between assets, exposures, privileges, and threats in an attack path. Prioritizing cyber risks is necessary to help cybersecurity teams continuously identify and focus on the attack paths that pose the greatest risk of being exploited. By providing accurate and predictive remediation information, these features enable security teams to proactively reduce risk with the least amount of effort to help prevent attacks.
Effective measures to communicate cyber risk: Security experts and business leaders need a centralized, aligned view of cyber risk with clear KPIs to show progress over time as well as capabilities to Benchmarking to compare yourself to external peers. An exposure management platform should provide actionable insights into an organization’s overall cyber risk, including the value of proactive efforts made on a daily basis. It also requires the ability for users to be able to drill down into the details of each department or business unit. It should provide accurate business-aligned cyber risk assessments to improve communication and collaboration among stakeholders. Actionable metrics allow security teams to show the value of their proactive efforts, save time, improve investment decisions, support cyber insurance initiatives, and drive improvement over time, all while tangibly reducing the risks for the organization.
McKinnel says exposure management gives cybersecurity leaders a way to capture the narrative of “reactive, headline-grabbing breaches and attacks” and allows them “to clearly articulate the effectiveness of security programs.” proactive and preventive in a language that the company will understand”. And it transcends the limitations of outdated, siled security programs.