According to a recent ReliaQuest survey, enterprises continue to deploy an assortment of security technologies across the network, email, endpoint devices, and the cloud despite an overwhelming number of existing investments, yet these tools are not able to proactively defend organizations against the evolving threat landscape. While individually providing valuable security telemetry, these tools are disconnected in nature and thus limit the ability of enterprises’ security operations (SecOps) teams to build a holistic picture across their ecosystem.

Security Operations Challenges

SecOps teams face five major challenges that impede effective operations.

1. Changing business landscape

Monitoring security across the enterprise even for the SOC has become harder and more complex because of the changing business landscape and the subsequent growing attack surface. Cloud migration, internet-connected devices, remote working, and enterprise mobility initiatives have blurred the corporate perimeter and dispersed data beyond the confinement of traditional enterprise walls leading to a lack of visibility and control.

Part of the reason threat detection is difficult in this changing environment is that many organizations are still using traditional, on-premises monitoring and detection tools. They’re inadequate because they’re not equipped to detect and respond to today’s threats. And any investments in new tools that purport to cover gaps with new technologies and paradigms do not integrate well with established security deployments.

2. Lack of singular visibility

Security Operations invest in a plethora of tools, yet lack optimal results. The key reason behind this inefficiency is the lack of interoperability. Systems and tools are purchased and deployed that don’t integrate well with each other. What’s more, analysts spend significant portions of their time administrating and managing various tools, taking them away from the roles they were hired to perform.

As a result, SecOps teams struggle to quickly identify threats and are buried in a flood of false positives. This leads to alert fatigue, leading to more human errors, and jeopardizing not only sustainable operations but also the security posture of the organization.

3. Inability to continuously optimize tools

Skills and staffing shortage is a common problem across the cybersecurity sector. The accelerated shift to new operating modes, cloud infrastructures, and cloud-native application architectures has only exacerbated the problem. Security tools require continuous optimization and management to keep up with product upgrades on one side and a rapidly evolving threat landscape on the other. If businesses cannot hire or train their security specialists, then the tool lags behind in its capabilities to deliver on its promise of closing the gap effectively.

4. Too many manual tasks and processes

There is also an over-emphasis on the human component with enterprise security programs exaggerating the skills and resource gap.  Analysts are spending more of their time on manual tasks such as administering and managing tools, hopping across them to collect data or response actions. This approach not only increases analyst fatigue but also the likelihood of human error. Automating low-level, repetitive tasks can relieve the human analyst from such tedium and allow them to focus on higher priority functions, improving efficiencies and reducing risk.

5. Lack of actionable metrics

Organizations need to adapt their strategy and seek to collect metrics that are meaningful towards protecting their resources and improving their operations based on outcomes desired. They need to focus on metrics that can help them communicate across their business so they can clearly understand how well they are positioned. After all, cyber risk is business risk. Metrics tracked have to go beyond technical ones, such as the number of alerts or vulnerabilities, and include actionable ones, such as team performance, ecosystem coverage, and performance against risk scenarios that help drive meaningful progress across security programs.

Detect

How ReliaQuest delivers best-in-class security operations

At the end of the day, SecOps teams seem to always be in constant fire-drill mode and not able to quantify risk well enough to confidently take actions. Security operations teams need the ability to be proactive so that they can focus on threats, respond fast, and drive successful outcomes.

A security operations platform is the evolution in security to address these challenges, and the ReliaQuest approach is unique. Its technology platform, GreyMatter, is backed by security experts who deliver services as needed, 24/7/365, and amplify in-house talent. With ReliaQuest, organizations have a trusted partner in operationalizing their security programs.

ReliaQuest makes security possible by force multiplying SecOps teams by increasing visibility across their environment, reducing complexity with integrations, and allowing analysts to focus on threat detection and analysis through a unified workbench to reduce the overall risk. To let analysts focus on their jobs and get away from low-level menial tasks, the platform delivers automation capabilities across the security lifecycle—not just for response. Open XDR as-a-service infuses AI and ML capabilities to ensure they get the right data and reduce false positives. Metrics that matter help security teams track their progress and maturity, and GreyMatter maps their metrics across kill chain and MITRE ATT&CK frameworks to enable the organizations to take measurable actions to improve their posture and reduce risk.

To help organizations even further, ReliaQuest released a new eBook, Best-in-Class Security Operations — and What It Takes to Get There. This resource takes a close look at the hallmarks of world-class security operations and offers recommendations to help organizations modernize their security operations programs. It also explains why ReliaQuest’s GreyMatter Security Operations Platform is essential to creating and operating a best-in-class security operations team.

 

Download the Best-in-Class Security Operations eBook >