Understanding the Need for Cybersecurity Asset Management
Conventional attack surface management strategies are proving ineffective, despite the increasing reliance on cybersecurity as a core business function. Discover the five reasons why organizations are embracing cybersecurity asset management.
Cybersecurity is no longer a purely tech-centric discipline. Cyber is a core business risk: just ask any organization that has endured the financial and reputational fallout of a major security breach. Today’s enterprises are beset by cyber risk on all sides—from advanced cybercrime groups and nation state actors to malicious and negligent insiders.
However, the current arsenal of tools wielded by organizations to counter these threats falls short of bolstering their security posture. Fragmented, isolated, and incapable of effectively managing the expansive and ever-expanding enterprise attack surface, these tools are proving inadequate. It’s clear that maintaining the status quo is no longer an option.
Why invest in a cybersecurity asset management solution?
In response, today’s cybersecurity leaders are championing centralized solutions to integrate asset visibility and classification, attack path mapping and cybersecurity control automation. These innovative solutions hold the promise of not only delivering substantial cost savings and return on investment but also of drastically minimizing cyber risk.
In essence, investing in cybersecurity asset management solutions such as Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) tools is imperative for organizations seeking to fortify their security posture and safeguard against the myriad threats of the digital age.
The Top 5 Security Challenges Addressed by Cyber Asset Management
A number of risk factors has made comprehensive cybersecurity asset management solutions including CAASM more attractive in the eyes of IT security buyers. They include:
- Rogue IT is looming in the shadows
You can’t manage or secure what you can’t see. That’s why shadow IT creates a black hole of cyber risk for organizations. Whether it’s unsanctioned devices, SaaS apps or even IaaS infrastructure, the challenge is escalating as employees look for workarounds to inflexible corporate security policies.
According to Gartner: “By 2027, 75% of employees will acquire, modify or create technology outside IT’s visibility.” That’s an 83% increase over 41% in 2022.
Shadow IT creates security and compliance risk because unmanaged assets might not be correctly configured or secured. Sensitive and regulated data may end up flowing undetected out of the business. And users may be paying for it all on the company’s dollar. Visibility is critical to accurately measure and manage the enterprise attack surface. - The impact of data breaches
One of the most obvious signs that security operations isn’t coping is the surging number of data breaches. In the US, publicly reported compromises reached record levels in 2023, up 72% on the previous all-time high. On average, they cost $4.45M globally, rising to $9.48m in the US. What’s more, 83% of organizations have experienced multiple data breaches, with nearly half (45%) of these occurring in the cloud.
Such incidents take their toll in more ways than pure financial impact. They might postpone or completely derail digital transformation programs critical to strategic growth plans. They may pull key staff away from their core work, impacting productivity and demotivating teams. And in the long term, the reputational hit for the brand could be potentially devastating—both in its ability to attract new customers and employees. - Human-inflicted challenges
At the heart of any organization is its people. But they also represent what is potentially the weakest link in the security chain. That’s why phishing remains one of the top vectors for cyber-attack. And it’s why business email compromise (BEC) cost organizations over $2.7bn in 2022. Three-quarters (74%) of all data breaches reported in 2022-23 involved the “human element.”
Sometimes insider risk is down to calculated malice, sometimes it’s just a lack of training. But somewhere in between is negligence. The bad news is that this is a growing trend among younger employees. One study reveals that almost half (48%) of 18-24-year-olds view security as a barrier to getting their work done, and a third (31%) try to bypass policies. - A growing compliance burden.
As the pressure builds on security teams, so it continues to grow for their colleagues working in compliance. The EU’s GDPR spawned countless imitators after it came into force in 2018. Now several US states are following suit, led by California. Then there are industry-specific rules like PCI DSS and the forthcoming DORA regulation for financial services. Boardrooms better pay attention, because increasingly it is senior managers that will be held responsible, and in some cases personally liable, for breaches and non-compliance. That’s the line favored by the SEC, and the EU’s sweeping NIS2 directive.
Three-quarters (74%) of organizations already agree that compliance is a burden. The burden will only grow as compliance skills become harder to source. Two-third of compliance and privacy leaders are concerned about a growing technical skills gap. - Security tools are letting teams down.
According to research from ESG, over half (58%) of organizations lack a centralized approach to security hygiene and posture management. This allows advanced threats to sneak in under the radar and leaves serious holes like vulnerabilities and misconfigurations unaddressed—increasing risk tenfold.
This also slows down collaboration among teams and increases the chances of business process interruptions. That same research reveals that two-fifths (42%) of teams take more than 80 hours to complete a comprehensive asset inventory.
The Noetic difference
Noetic presents a superior approach: providing organizations with a unified, correlated view of their enterprise attack surface through continuous monitoring of all assets and their security posture. By integrating this information with current security posture and interdependencies, Noetic brings the entire picture into focus. This holistic perspective empowers organizations to bolster their security posture, minimize risk, and streamline operations effectively. With Noetic, businesses can navigate the complexities of cybersecurity with confidence and resilience in today’s ever-evolving threat landscape.
Discover how Noetic can unlock substantial economic advantages for your organization in our latest report, From Risk to Returns: Noetic Cyber Asset and Exposure Management.
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