Businesses are breached online every single day, and most of the time, those companies don’t even realize it until 207 days after the incident. Considering that the average breach will cost a business $3.86 million as of 2020, digital security is something that your business needs to implement as soon as possible.
This threat is actively felt across all business industries, with 68% of business leaders stating that they are now considerably more worried about digital safety. But, with the rise of the digital threat also comes incredible technological advancements that can keep your business safe.
One of these technologies, security validation, has recently become incredibly popular due to its comprehensive level of online defence.
What is security validation?
The process of security validation is the action of checking that all the security defences, systems, and tools that your company is using are running at maximum capacity. Their job is to seek out faulty tools, as well as alert the network if they detect any gaps in security.
This validation system can be run continuously in order to make sure your systems are as safe as possible. Considering that security can become exposed at any time, running a continuous scan is the only way that you can alert your team as soon as a problem arises.
As cybercrime was up 569% in only the first three months of 2020, the defences that your company employs have never been more important.
Why not let your security team handle the threat?
While the declining number of cybersecurity staff hires seems to suggest that the cyber threat is becoming less of an issue over time, this actually isn’t the correct conclusion. In fact, fewer businesses are hiring cybersecurity defence staff as machines can now do a better job automatically, making them much less of vital employment in your company.
There are several reasons that people are using automatic tools rather than hiring additional security staff members:
- Lack of knowledge
- Developing threats
- Expanding attack surfaces
Let’s break these down further.
Lack of Knowledge
While security staff often have training in specialized areas of cyber defences, no one can be an expert in absolutely everything. While this is understandable, the fact is that computers are an expert in everything. A typical cybersecurity officer will have some knowledge of the potential avenues that hackers will try and use, but they won’t know enough to keep your business completely safe.
That’s why businesses are turning to automatic solutions, with cyber defence programs that are versed in the entire cybersecurity defence protocol being able to cover more of your company online. By scanning continuously through the different potential threats, automatic programs can protect your company 24/7, with advanced AI knowledge ensuring that they cover all of your potential weak points.
Developing Threats
Much like a lack of knowledge, many cybersecurity officers also won’t be able to stay on top of new developments in cyberspace. For example, while they might be well versed in common threats, if a new threat were to develop, their limited knowledge would mean that they don’t know about the threat ahead of time, and then fail to put up defences.
Meanwhile, a computer program can be regularly updated with all the latest information about cyber defences. This means that when hackers develop a new strategy, your business can launch defences almost instantly, with your system having accurate knowledge about what to do with this new, developing threat.
Expanding Attack Surfaces
The modern internet is incredibly vast, especially for a business. With all the various services, accounts, and online platforms that a business uses, their attack surface – the total sum of all possible weak points on their network – has become larger than ever. Due to the sheer scope of the possible entry points, a human security expert will struggle to think of them all, let alone actually implement defences for all of them.
Yet, an automatic continuous security validation system will be able to simultaneously scan and update all of your connected systems, taking a holistic approach to your security. With their scanning, they’ll be able to ensure that all of your defences are working, helping your business to stay safe online.
Turning to security validation
Instead of allowing humans to completely run your digital security, implementing a continuous security validation will actively work to keep you safe. Alongside providing a more comprehensive level of security, it can also work in tandem with your team, alerting them when something isn’t as it should be and helping them to remediate the problem.
A balanced mix of an advanced continuous security validation system and an expert team will ensure you’re more protected than ever. Especially considering that these systems are updated with all the recent tactics found and uploaded to the MITRE ATT&CK Framework – the world’s largest database of hacking techniques used against businesses – it will actively keep your company safe.
Covering your whole attack surface is too grand of a job for a security team. Due to this, your business should employ a continuous security validation system, which will ensure all vulnerabilities are found and patched before they’re encountered by someone with nefarious intentions.
Cyberattacks are coming, whether you like it or not; foresight is ensuring you will be prepared for when they do.