Managing the cyber risks you can’t see

Almost every organisation we talk to has an asset inventory and visibility issue. Once upon a time, everything was visible and tangible- hardware was purchased, it arrived in a box, it was added to a reasonably static asset register, it was deployed, and it was accounted for.

Then the Cloud came. And remote working. And global teams. And specialist teams. DevOps, SecOps, DevSecOps, Infrastructure, public Cloud, private Cloud, automation, integrated, siloed, insourced, outsourced then insourced again.

With the continuous rate of change in organisations coupled with the evolution in the threat landscape, tracking structures, teams, assets, users, technologies, platforms – and risk- is a never-ending cycle.

Your organisation is at risk from the assets you can’t see and the tools you’ve invested in

Most organisations have deployed technologies to help manage the environment, and its security risk, all working independently of each other. From patch deployment to vulnerability scanners through to EDR technology and hypervisors, we’re all trying to track and manage risk across an ever-growing landscape of assets, applications, technologies and users.

Every tool will tell you a different story. And they can only tell you what they know. You’re spending all of your time, resources and funding managing 60% of the assets you know you have. But you’re missing the 40% you didn’t know you had. In fact, the tools you’ve deployed to protect your organisation, might not be protecting you at all.

The vulnerabilities that sit in the assets you can’t identify could expose you to risk you didn’t even know you had.

The risk of manual processes and intervention

So many organisations are still using Excel to track assets and inventory. This should be classified as its own level of risk. Trying to control contributors, data quality, duplication and versioning erodes confidence from Board to bench. So, what’s the alternative? How can you protect what you can’t see?

Data aggregation tools can provide a single source of truth

Aggregation technology is one of the most effective ways to track and manage user and asset inventory and visibility. These ground breaking technologies stitch together the visibility provided by hundreds of vendor technologies, maintaining integrations to provide a complete, de-duplicated, single version of truth across all assets and users. They also remove the risk of not applying controls in a comprehensive and cohesive way.

This provides a) absolute visibility of all of your asset and user inventory and b) surfaces the security gaps and risks you need to remediate.

Automation driving performance, productivity and protection

The real power in these technologies comes from the ability to pro-actively manage security gaps. Customised automated remediation rules streamline processes, prevent future incidents and provide the comprehensive reporting, metrics and trend tracking that give stakeholders and users confidence that the investment in toolsets is returning maximum value.

Through aggregation technology, manual intervention is removed, resources are optimised and policies and processes are enforced with minimal effort.