The modern workforce is no longer confined to the traditional office environment. The rise of remote work and cloud adoption has created a hybrid landscape where employees access data and applications from various locations and devices.
The goal of every security organization is to protect its data. This mission has become increasingly complex in the face of an expanding attack surface and increasingly sophisticated and frequent attacks waged by relentless adversaries. Effectively responding to security incidents requires the Security Operations Center (SOC) to validate alerts and provide the IR team with critical details on the scope of the threat so they can quickly and reliably remediate the issue. However, several obstacles hinder the SOC from gaining the necessary visibility to deliver this critical insight.
Time is a precious commodity, something that most people wish they had more of. This includes the security operations center (SOC), as analysts are constantly under pressure to stay ahead of cyberattack methodologies to better ensure business continuity. And as sharp as our experts are, the team at WEI cannot create more hours for the day. Still, we can streamline and automate your security operations to effectively make it seem like we have done just that. Enhanced time efficiency is just one of six proven benefits that WEI, in collaboration with Cortex XSIAM by Palo Alto Networks, can offer.
See Bill Frank’s biography and contact information at the end of this article.
This article is Part Two of my series on managing cyber-related business risks. In Part One, I discussed the relationship between Defensive Controls and Performance Controls. Defensive Controls directly block threats. Performance Controls measure the effectiveness of Defensive Controls and suggest improvements.
Imagine this: you’re a security analyst on the frontlines of your organization’s cybersecurity team. You stare at your monitor as alerts flood from various security programs, like alarms all going off at once. Then you ask: is it a full-blown attack or simply a routine update? The sheer volume of data makes prioritizing the most urgent threats a constant challenge.
Bad actors are waging increasingly sophisticated and frequent attacks—including ransomware, cyber espionage, zero-day malware and fileless attacks—to exploit endpoint vulnerabilities. These rapid-fire, diverse attacks are generating an average of 11,000 alerts per week that security teams must investigate, triage and address.
As business leaders outside of IT continue accepting cybersecurity as a business strategy rather than just as a digital defense mechanism, there are still major vacancies in the cybersecurity personnel pipeline that require addressing. Knowing this, WEI’s advanced security solutions are complemented by a focus on helping replenish the talent pipeline. This commitment is confirmed by WEI’s partnership with CyberTrust Massachusetts, a non-profit organization working to cultivate a robust talent pipeline. The support CyberTrust receives from its higher education consortium members is paramount, especially with the all-new Cyber Range at Bridgewater State University (BSU) opening earlier this year.
The advent of 2024 opens a new era, spotlighting the significant strides in cloud adoption and digital transformation that organizations have dramatically pushed forward, some by as much as six years. This rapid progression aims at fostering business innovation, gaining competitive edges, and achieving set business objectives. Looking back reveals a period of not only acceleration, but also substantial expansion. Applications now reside just about everywhere, distributed across traditional data centers, clouds, colocation providers, and computing edges. It is a new landscape that signals a broadened scope of IT infrastructure.
See Bill Frank’s biography and contact information at the end of this article.
[Note: This is an updated version of the original article posted on March 21, 2024. I replaced the term "Governance” Controls with “Performance” Controls to eliminate any confusion with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 use of the term “Governance.”
I focus here on automated controls that monitor and measure the “performance” of “Defensive” controls that directly block threats or at least alert on suspicious activities.
How well are your cybersecurity controls performing? Measuring control efficacy is challenging. In fact, under-configured, misconfigured, and poorly tuned controls, as well as variances in security processes are the Achilles Heels of cybersecurity programs.
A mismatch between risk reduction potential and performance results in undetected threats (false negatives) as well as an excessive number of false positives. This leads to an increase in the likelihood of loss events.
All controls, whether people, processes, or technologies, can be categorized in one of two ways – Defensive or Performance.
In the modern healthcare ecosystem, data plays a critical role. From storing patient records and managing finances to facilitating research and developing treatment plans, this information forms the lifeblood of the industry. It goes beyond the common data pulls for medical histories and financial details, as it also encompasses vital research findings, drug trial results, and personalized treatment plans – all essential for individual well-being and scientific advancement. However, this treasure trove attracts attackers, threatening patient privacy and trust, hindering care, and compromising the entire healthcare system.
