It’s safe to say that most organizations that rely on information technology to carry out business operations will already have anti-virus software installed and a firewall (that is hopefully configured properly).
Most will have some form of access control solution in place, protocols and solutions that deal with backup and recovery, and some (not all) will use encryption to protect their sensitive data.
Some larger organizations will utilize more advanced solutions, such as an Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDS/IPS), or some form of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution.
The point being organizations are highly dependent on technology to ensure that their systems and data are secure. That said, it is often the case where businesses don’t really appreciate the true value that these technologies bring to the table.
Below are 5 of the key reasons why adopting the right tools and technologies is paramount to minimizing the likelihood of falling victim to a costly data breach.
1. There Are Simply Far Too Many Security Threats to Deal with Manually
There are possibly more security threats than there are words in the dictionary, or at least, far too many to list here. To make matters worse, the world is grappling with a serious shortage of cyber-security professionals, and there doesn’t seem to be a simple way to solve this problem, at least not in the short term.
Security teams are required to deal with potential malware infections, which include viruses, Ransomware, spyware, and so on.
Malware can be spread through phishing emails, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), drive-by Downloads, portable drives and devices, to name a few. Security teams are required to protect themselves from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, SQL injection attacks, Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, and so on.
To add insult to injury, they are also required to contend with security incidents that are caused by their own employees, whether due to negligence or malice. Employees may steal sensitive data for profit, or some other reason.
They sometimes share passwords, email sensitive data to the wrong recipient, access the company network from an unsecured public Wi-Fi hotspot, or perhaps even misplace a device that has access to valuable company data.
There’s simply no way that security teams would be able to cope without a comprehensive suite of tools to detect and respond to all possible eventualities.
2. Networks Have Become Too Complex and Distributed
Over the last decade networks have gone through a rapid expansion in size, scope, and complexity. Now, instead of having single, centralized database which stores all personal data, the data is spread across multiple platforms and data centers.
Not only that but these days increasingly more data is unstructured, which includes photos, videos, podcasts, power-point presentations, and more. Given the nature of unstructured data, businesses often have a hard time trying to locate, sort, search and classify the data, which opens up a number of security risks.
Trying to organize your unstructured data manually would take considerable time and effort. Fortunately, there are solutions available that can automatically discover and classify a wide range of data types by scanning your files and folders in search of personally identifiable information (PII), or other types of sensitive data.
3. It’s Not Feasible to Manually Establish the Reputation of a Given Entity
Imagine asking your security team to verify each and every email that arrives at an employee’s inbox, or every link that an employee might click on, to ensure that it is from (or to) a trusted entity.
I’m sure we can all agree that this would not be a practical solution. However, using the right security solutions, such tasks can be automated. An advanced SOAR (Security orchestration, automation, and response) platform can carry out a contextual analysis of email addresses and URLs by checking the geo-location of the domain and perform a search to identify any known security incident associated with the domain.
They can also use threat intelligence feeds, and other contextual data to assign a risk score to a wide variety of events and entities, which allow security teams to prioritize their investigations.
4. The Ability to Detect, Alert and Respond to Insider Threats in a Timely Manner
As already mentioned, a large number of data breaches are actually caused by our own employees.
Without an adequate data security solution, how could security teams tell when an employee is accessing, copying, and moving, deleting or downloading large amounts of sensitive data? Without a solution that can learn typical usage patterns and perform a contextual analysis of the events that are taking place on their network, how could they differentiate between legitimate and anomalous events? How would they know when sensitive data is being sent to a recipient outside of their organization?
Without the right tools, security teams simply couldn’t gain the visibility and control that they need to protect their data.
Another crucial factor that decides whether a company falls victim to a breach, or not, is the speed in which they are able to respond to incidents. Most sophisticated UBA (User Behaviour Analytics) solutions are not only able to detect and respond to single events in real-time, but they are also able to respond to events that match a pre-defined threshold condition.
5. Generating Advanced Customized Reports at the Click of a Button
These days, most data privacy laws require organizations to provide evidence that they know who has access to personal data, and how the data is being processed.
A failure to provide this information to the supervisory authorities in a timely manner could result in some form of disciplinary action. And of course, security teams would also benefit from reading these reports too, especially when conducting a forensic analysis of a breach that has already occurred.
However, generating these reports manually would be an arduous and time-consuming task. Fortunately, most UBA solutions allow security teams to generate advanced reports at the click of a button and provide pre-sets that are customized to meet the demands of a large number of data protection regulations.
At the end of the day, the best approach to data security is to be proactive, rather than reactive. Instead of waiting for a breach to occur, and then sifting through the debris to find the culprit, a Data Security Platform will be able to detect and respond to potential threats, and stop them in their tracks before that are able to do any damage. Schedule a demo of Lepide Data Security Platform today.