In this final blog in the Defense-in-Depth series, we explore the symbiotic relationship between the controls in your security plan and increased efficiency and efficacy as a direct result of integration. Before diving in, in the previous blog, we covered how a strong defense-in-depth strategy is the answer to protecting your infrastructure. Closing security gaps simplifies the holistic mitigation of sophisticated threats by minimizing complexity — often noted as an enemy of security.
Spotlight on: The Third “C”
If you haven’t read any of the previous blogs in this series, we discuss how “the four C’s”:
- Consistency
- Compliance
- Consolidation
- Cost Savings
define concepts relating directly to developing and implementing your security plan based on defense-in-defense strategies. Moreover, the four C’s also drive the evolution of your security plan; shaping itself to close gaps in security as it grows alongside it to meet your organization's unique needs.
This iterative achievement can only be unlocked by integrating your security tooling while fusing IT and Security, forming a seamless, heavily fortified team. Similar to the phalanx formation that relies on rows of troops to defend Greek and Roman cities, consolidation strengthens defense capabilities while increasing both efficiency and efficacy.
“We fight as a single, impenetrable unit.” — King Leonidas
Powerful tool
Solutions that make up the foundational element of your security plan, specifically device management, identity and access, and endpoint security, get a significant boost thanks to integration.
Integrating tooling extends protections, processes and workflows. Relying upon the individual strengths of each tool, integration leverages rich telemetry data that is securely shared between each tool, enabling comprehensive security by layering protections to prevent threats and mitigate risk factors. Should a threat slip past one protection, the layers above and below it in the security stack are available to prevent it from leading to a data breach. Additionally, integrating disparate tools streamlines controls and extends them across your infrastructure. This provides enterprises with a holistic, powerful security solution that enforces compliance for all protected resources regardless of device type, operating system, network connection or physical location.
Skilled wielders
The other type of integration factor to strengthen an organization’s security posture is present in the unification of its IT and Security teams. Doing so minimizes incident response times while maximizing solutions delivery to end-users — both benefit organizations by streamlining IT/Security communication, and business continuity through efficient user productivity workflows.
Consolidating both IT and Security into a strong, lean team breaks down the communication silos that have traditionally existed between these two departments. In doing so, the facilitation of communication has a trickle-down effect, leading to:
- Seamless integration of management, identity and endpoint security workflows
- Expedited response to security incidents and triaging
- Efficient mitigation of threats by any available team member
- Enablement of automated remediation tasks
- Improved business processes by reinvesting focus from manual tasks
Return on Investment (ROI)
While not as glamorous a topic as say, incorporating AI to develop automated threat prevention policies, there is a significant case to be made for cost savings analysis and the critical role ROI plays in your overall security plan.
Specifically, understanding how the modern threat landscape impacts enterprise security and how you can adapt security controls to meet your company’s unique needs. Below are several examples of direct and indirect factors that impact ROI and speak to the organization’s overall security strategy.
Save Time (Efficacy)
Earlier, the word holistic described extending comprehensive protections across the organizational infrastructure. While this is made possible by integrating tools in your security stack, in this section, we granularly explore the type of tool that increases the efficacy of protections being integrated.
The type of tool we’re referring to is one that natively supports devices and OS types in your organization. It’s common for providers to pitch “all-in-one” tools that claim to support each device and OS type. Upon further scrutiny, these one size does not fit all types of tools often promote compatibility with one OS at the expense of another, leading to a disparity between the levels of protecting the favored OS while inadequately protecting others.
However, solutions with native support are purpose-built, providing comprehensive protections for the OS while meeting the unique needs of its users. This minimizes gaps in security and grants organizations the tools necessary to fully support and protect the devices and OS types used within the enterprise.
Decrease Spend (Efficiency)
Reducing the complexity between solutions and incident response minimizes the discovery of security incidents and remediation timeframes. This results in less downtime and higher productivity — both of which are key ROI points.
“Remember that time is money.” — Benjamin Franklin
The aphorism above is famously paraphrased and quoted extensively when determining the value of time versus a particular standard of comparison. In the case of ROI and integration of solutions, the comparison is quite clear:
- Streamlining device deployments
- Standardizing configuration and software provisioning
- Protecting resources by leveraging identity and access permissions
- Preventing malware and other known threats
- Automating mitigation and remediation workflows
are all actions made possible by integrating solutions to natively, comprehensively manage and secure devices within the enterprise. They benefit organizations, including saving them money, by:
- Minimizing risk
- Reducing downtime
- Increasing productivity
- Enforcing standards
- Maintaining compliance
Alleviate Headaches (Compliance)
The term “headaches” here refers to any such event, issue or threat that would otherwise cause an endpoint to become non-compliant. Compliance — whether impacting a device, user or data — impacts the organization as a whole.
With this in mind, compliance issues are compounded in regulated industries because of the local, state, federal and/or regional governance implications of violating compliance.
Active monitoring and reporting places rich telemetry data in the hands of administrators in real time. Integrated solutions utilizing device health (telemetry) data proactively identify risk vectors and perform remediation tasks before threat actors can exploit vulnerabilities, saving organizations from exposure to the costly consequences of violating regulations.
