When we talk about IT security, we are confronted with a plethora of products and technologies, all of which are as indispensable as they are incomplete, which pushes us to combine them together in an ideal but uncertain and often too theoretical coverage.
Firewall, Endpoint protection (antivirus, antispam, antixxx, ...), Application Control, Access Control, Log Management, Web Protection, Email Protection, Exploit Protection, Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Anti-Ransomware,... and others are all security products that seem to be indispensable to secure our network. How to choose, what to protect, and at what cost?
Very Skilled Personnel and Solid Processes
One of the biggest challenges in managing IT security is the need for a highly skilled team in a very complicated field. The security manager must define the security rules, define the processes, implement the predefined rules in the chosen tools, know and maintain all the tools, processes and rules and finally manage incidents by making the right decisions.
Too many security alerts, not processed...
All the tools deployed on the network generate a lot of alerts. The sheer number of alerts sent out prevents managers from having the time and resources to classify and process them.
Moreover, the continuous flow of these alerts increases the difficulty of processing and therefore, makes the tools or operators inefficient.
The post-incident forensic work is considerable
As explained in the previous paragraph, the absence of a fully automated flow imposes a longer time to solve the problem. AND it's that long time frame that allows attacks to materialize. While prevention, scanning for potential attacks and monitoring are necessary, once an incident is detected, it is essential to drastically reduce the reaction time involving analysis, alerting and remediation to ideally less than a second, which is humanly impossible.
Yet threats continue to find their way in
Spoofing, Zero Day, DDOS attacks, Worms, Exposure, Spyware, Rootkit, Pharming, Ransomware, Data Theft, Trojans, Adware, BoT, SQL Injections, Cryptominer, Cryptolocker, Exploit, XSS, ... so many threats lurking around us.
Today, data shows that while companies invest in a multitude of security tools, human resources and procedures to ensure their proper functioning, advanced threats continue to find their way in.
In fact, the average annual cost of cyberattacks is now $6 million per company, yes, that's huge!
Exposure is always changing
The biggest problem is that attacks occur exactly where the greatest weaknesses or vulnerabilities are, and therefore often where we least expect them!
The exposure of our computer network is constantly changing: security holes (a VPN from an unauthorized device), human errors (allowing temporary access without security), excessive exposure (ports left open).