Is your security turning into shelfware?

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Is your security turning into shelfware?
When practically everyone seemed to point the
accusatory finger at Target for its alleged
inattention to malware alerts, weve got to admit
that a whole lot of us secretly empathized with
the retail giant.  After all, it was what we can
all agree to call, a security shelfware risk that
could happen to anyone, well, anyone who
purchased a purportedly plug-and-play technology
and believed they were good to go.
Placebo is a serious threat to security
management. It can be dangerously easy to give in
to the sense of security that comes with the
deployment of every new security technology. As
we learned from the Target data breach incident,
a lot could go wrong when your organization lacks
the right resources to empirically assess the
publicized features of a security implement
both to assay its highest benefits and to
understand precisely how it functions. Small and
medium organizations are the hardest hit by
security shelfware because they dont enjoy the
same economies of scale that larger companies do
and thus face the risk of greater misspending on
a per user basis. But, no matter the size of
their business, IT teams are overwhelmed with
challenges in coping with exposure to
increasingly complex threats a situation that
can only get worse with an uncertain security
posture and unaccounted costs. How to be sure
that your investment in security implements is
being fully utilized? Organizations arent
breached because they fail to invest in security,
but evidently because they have been doing it
wrong.
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Is your security turning into shelfware?
Whether you purchased a security product solely
to satisfy a compliance or regulatory requirement
or are under-resourced to utilize its advanced
features, it may be easy to ignore the unrealized
ROI but you have got to face the fact that your
data breach liability is dramatically increasing
while you have the under-optimized security
software deployed. Balancing ease of management
and visibility Trustwave and Osterman Research
Inc. published a report last year that
highlighted the issue of underutilized security
software. Every reason behind the increase in
unrealized ROI accentuated in the report points
to a central issue the dearth of expertise and
time to manage and maneuver security
technologies. Security implements like IDS and
SIEM often end up gathering dust because we make
the mistake of accepting more than our in-house
IT teams can handle. Or, we take for it for
granted when a vendor claims his product is all
set from the word go, assuming it is at its full
potential. In reality, these security solutions
work best when handled by engineers with in-depth
functional knowledge. The secret to getting it
right is ensuring that the out-of-box
functionality the vendor advertised is
practicable in your environment. This is
typically where most of us make the wrong call.
We fail to address fundamental imperatives like,
What can this software do for my enterprise?
Or, I hear this is a great product but how can I
get the most value from it? How do I know if this
is what my business needs and whether its
working fine? This makes the case for why
managed security can help an organization whose
security priorities are constantly shifting and
deployment never gets completed properly. Instead
of starting with a purchase and then looking for
resources to make it operational, it makes more
sense to try a solution that has expertise and
capabilities coalesced.
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Is your security turning into shelfware?

• Three important advantages of having dedicated
  security personnel handle security software
  deployment, optimization, validation and
  maintenance
• Gauging functional effectiveness of the
  deployment
• Verifying that defense level is optimal
• Tracking value and outcomes
• While managed security can help reduce wasteful
  spending, it is not easy to give it your
  unbridled trust unless the provider prioritizes
  keeping you ahead of the storm through insightful
  reporting and status monitoring. Easy
  manageability does not warrant compromise on
  visibility. Ensuring that communication channels
  are active and open is one of the most definitive
  indicators of the proactive ongoing support that
  an MSSP should provide.  
• Always insist on maintaining an up-to-date asset
  inventory and policy management plan to support
  audit trails and vendor management reviews.
• Dont spend money to lose more. It pays to seek
  objective perspectives on security software, the
  vendor and the service offering from reliable
  sources.
• But nothing helps calculative spending like an
  operational test run does.
• Thats why the 247 Managed Security Suite is now
  available on a 15-day trial period.
• Our services include Ethical Hacking, Managed
  Security Services, Application Security, Network
  Security, Security Testing, Enterprise Security,
  Security for IoT, SCADA Security, Digital
  Forensics