The past two years have forced rapid and drastic shifts in businesses worldwide. Amid a global pandemic, organizations suddenly found themselves in a work-from-home model; and even as businesses return to the office, hybrid work is here to stay.
Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are now faced with a new reality. There has been a near-sevenfold increase in spear-phishing attacks since the pandemic began. In addition to enabling a secure and always-connected dispersed workforce, CISOs also need to address new network and data security threats that target remote employees.
Insights from a McKinsey research released in January 2022 highlighted four key cybersecurity challenges that organizations face as they adapt to the new normal; namely, a visibility gap, a fragmentation of technology, a talent gap, and the difficulties in measuring cybersecurity’s Return on Investment (ROI). This article outlines how AWS partners such as Cloud Comrade can provide Managed Security Services to help organizations tackle these issues and drive their business forward in the new normal.
The missing links
A key challenge that organizations have when it comes to cybersecurity is the lack of visibility in their digital infrastructure. This makes it difficult for them to recognize when, where, or why there is a problem. This can be detrimental because when it comes to safeguarding your business critical applications and data, nothing is more time-sensitive or important than threat detection. By bringing dangers out into the open, you’ll be able to minimize the reaction time taken to mitigate the risks.
CISOs are also faced with the issue of technology fragmentation. This is especially so when it comes to larger organizations; a lot of times, different technology, applications, and providers are used across an organization. In fact, a company may have more than 100 third-party security tools in use, with each contributing to the security complexity. This can cause decision paralysis; IT teams are fearful of reducing the number of security applications, including those that seem redundant, as they are unsure of the impact that can ensue. Afterall, no CISO desires to be the one who cancels the tool that might prevent the next big breach.
The cybersecurity-talent gap is part of a larger manpower shortage in the technology industry. It is not a new problem, but it’s one that is set to accelerate and affect a growing number of organizations. The International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC)² has projected a shortage of 1.8 million cybersecurity professionals in 2022.
As more organizations transform into digital businesses, a struggle they face is in understanding how to measure the return or value of a dollar spent on cybersecurity. The inability to accurately communicate or measure the ‘actual’ ROI of a cybersecurity investment, and map it to business priorities, would also make stakeholder buy-in difficult.
Engineering future-ready cybersecurity
When organizations adopt AWS services, the responsibility of security is shared between AWS and the customer. Regardless of the size of your organization, leveraging the expertise of an AWS Partner such as Cloud Comrade is a valuable way to increase your security posture.
The Managed Security services offered by Cloud Comrade include full security visibility across the AWS environment, such as AWS resource inventory visibility. This entails the continuous scanning and reporting of all AWS resources and their configuration details, which will be updated automatically with newly added or removed resources. Cloud Comrade also provides security events monitoring and triage. A combination of automated tooling and security experts continuously monitor aggregated AWS resource logs across network, host, and API layers to analyze security events. Alerts and remediation guidance are provided to help customers resolve issues in their environments.
To help organizations to overcome the technology-fragmentation challenge, Cloud Comrade can operationalize both native AWS security services such as AWS Security Hub, Amazon GuardDuty, as well as third-party Security Competency (ISV) Partner products. We do so by providing the skill sets needed to implement tooling according to AWS recommended best practices. Where possible, customers can continue to utilize familiar or previously purchased tools.
We have worked closely with AWS security experts to develop offerings combining security tools, skill sets, and processes leveraging native AWS security services, AWS Solutions Implementations, and third-party solutions. A Premier AWS consulting partner such as Cloud Comrade is able to skillfully integrate, join forces, and work alongside your security teams or provide full outsourcing for your AWS security operations – eliminating the headache of cybersecurity talent shortages. We also offer additional security assessment, design, implementation, and training to support your cloud journey and ensure that your security posture supports your key business priorities.
A strategic approach to security
When done right, cybersecurity can unleash the full potential of your business. Amid a burgeoning threat landscape, an AWS Premier Tier Consulting Partner like Cloud Comrade can provide the Managed Security Services you need to address the challenges of meeting growing, and more sophisticated, cybersecurity threats. Leave it to us to help you protect your business-critical assets and bolster your security efficacy, so that your IT teams are free to focus on innovation and building your business.
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