paulineAddress Threat Management – No Ifs and Buts
Statistics prove beyond doubt that cyber criminals are after the sensitive and confidential information of the enterprises. Hence, in normal circumstances, the greatest concern of any enterprise today should be information security. However, the shocking fact is that majority of enterprises do not monitor security and the reason for such an attitude is the high Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), poor risk management, lack of automation and adequate integrated solutions. Though for enterprises these may be genuine reasons for not monitoring security, but these are not acceptable when taking into account the big picture. Therefore, there can be no ifs and buts when it comes to ensuring threat management.
Information is the lifeblood of any enterprise, its greatest asset, as it is this information that drives businesses. The success of any business enterprise largely depends on the confidentiality, reliability, availability, and security of information. Every enterprise generates and mines huge chunks of data every minute. This data carries potential risks and therefore it should be handled very carefully. According to McAfee’s Unsecured Economies Report, businesses lose more than $1 trillion in intellectual property, due to data theft and cybercrime annually on a global basis. This is one of the reasons why the federal government formulated several regulations such as HIPAA, HITECH, PCI DSS, ISO, COBIT, FISMA, SOX, BASEL II and so on and adopted a carrot and stick approach to ensure that the enterprises comply with these regulations. Therefore, when enterprises fail to monitor security, they are actually taking enormous long-term risks at the expense of any short-term cost advantages.
Depending on point solutions such as firewalls, antivirus, spam filters and so on are not enough to counter new age security threats. Enterprises need a unified security monitoring solution that allows their users to access applications and information where and when it is required, without exposing the organization to security threats, data loss and compliance risks. With automated enterprise compliance management software, enterprises get end-to-end integration of security monitoring with IT governance risk and compliance (IT GRC).
Hence, instead of taking a laid-back attitude and then lamenting about the loss, enterprises need to proactively deploy effective information security and compliance management solutions and be relaxed.
