The future of consolidated security platforms‭ ‬

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

That’s the reality we live in. In today’s ever-evolving digital landscape, the fear of cyber threats is a constant reality. We all know adversaries keep finding new ways to breach even the most well-protected organizations. It’s a known fact that starts every cybersecurity blog or security-product pitch. This fear of what might happen has driven vendors to create great security solutions and organizations to purchase them. However, despite investments in great security solutions, many organizations struggle to answer the crucial question, “am I truly protected against the latest cyber threats out there?”. Or worse, they may mistakenly assume that because of those investments, they are fully protected. 

Here’s a thought: maybe, despite having the best technologies (or even because we keep buying new security solutions), enterprise security posture became too complex and dispersed to manage and optimize. Not to mention shamelessly trying to maximize the usage of the security products without worrying about causing business disruption.  

The law of diminishing returns

This law of diminishing returns states that in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production while holding all others constant (“ceteris paribus”) will, at some point, yield lower incremental per-unit returns.” 

There are just too many siloed security solutions that increase complexity and create ‘dashboard fatigue’. Massive amounts of data and security alerts that create ‘alert fatigue,’ and limited resources, i.e., not enough people and not enough time to take care of all of the above.  
There is not enough time to process all data from the different security sources. But it takes too much time to reach a verdict regarding true positive alerts.  

we are drowning in information while starving for wisdom but 45% of this information is false-positives.

There is just too much noise.

The road to optimal security posture 

We all agree that a change is necessary. But the thought of significant changes can be daunting. We want to eliminate or at least reduce uncertainty and doubt that our security stack is indeed protecting our organization. That’s why many organizations opt for consolidated security platforms like XDR. However, even with a consolidated platform, there are still challenges to overcome: 

• Still, just too many incidents (true and false positives) to investigate.  
• We’re constantly reacting (It might already be too late when we identify a real threat).  

Implementing an XDR solution does reduce the time to detect and respond to a cyber threat. Still, there is an inherent shortage of manpower when it comes to the analysis of the mass of real detections. 

• We are unaware of the business context of our actions (or reactions). We are missing insight into the causality between our cybersecurity actions and the business impact they cause.  

• We are never really focusing our remediation efforts around adjusting our security controls as the preferred modus operandi (We are just trying to prioritize the next patch we need to apply). This leaves us with an abundance of suggestions to follow (and an uncontrolled urge to shorten the ever-growing queue and respond fast to every threat that has been found. 

• We constantly find ourselves playing catch-up by patching vulnerabilities or responding to threats rather than proactively optimizing our current security controls. This results in an overwhelming amount of remediation suggestions and an uncontrolled urge to prioritize speed over effectiveness in remediating threats and security gaps. 

Reduce complexity. Increase effectiveness.

In light of these challenges, it’s essential for organizations to adopt a new approach to cybersecurity. This approach should focus on reducing the complexity of managing the organization’s security posture, providing better visibility into the impact of security actions on the business, and ensuring alignment with the specific cyber threats faced by the organization. 

To achieve this, we need to start by shifting our focus from just purchasing new security products to maximizing the usage of the security products we already have. It requires organizations to adopt a continuous improvement cycle, where they continually assess, optimize, and evolve the security controls of each point solution and the organization’s security posture.  

The words consolidation and automation are only relevant if they indeed simplify security operations and enable continuous improvement. Consolidated security platforms should represent a proactive, data-driven, and business-centric approach to cybersecurity. This means using the (current) security configuration as the reference point for every threat analysis. Organizations should be able to identify misconfigurations and security gaps automatically. They should be able to optimize their security posture before vulnerabilities are exploited, automatically. They should reduce operational overhead on security teams by reducing alert fatigue caused by chasing down false positive events and improve the security hygiene of all security solutions automatically. 

Veriti consolidated security platform

Veriti consolidates disparate security solutions into a single, unified platform. So instead of juggling multiple security solutions with various dashboards, it brings everything together into one cohesive platform, eliminating the complexity of managing the organization’s security posture from multiple dashboards. Utilizing advanced machine learning, it analyzes and correlates security data, including configurations, telemetries, logs, and threat intelligence, to identify potential risks or security gaps.  

This proactive approach ensures that your organization is always one step ahead, focusing its efforts on the most pressing security matters and minimizing the impact of false positive events. 

Conclusion

Organizations make significant investments in fortifying their cyber defenses. They have the right to feel confident that their existing security investment is being used effectively. Consolidating security solutions into a configuration-aware security platform can help organizations maximize the value of their existing security investment and minimize the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that often accompany cybersecurity efforts.