What is security posture management?

Security posture management refers to an organization’s ability to predict, assess, prevent, mitigate, and remediate cyber security threats. This involves using proper security management tools for assistance by providing threat visibility, access controls, and automated processes.

Now, we’ll consider why properly managing your company’s security posture is so important and how it helps your teams build a first line of defense against continuously evolving cyber threats.

Why is strong security posture management so important?

Security Posture Management is vital for every organization as the primary defense against cyber threats. 

Cybersecurity Ventures expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15 percent per year over the next three years, reaching $8 trillion USD globally in 2023 and $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion USD in 2015.

Preventing catastrophic damage from unnoticed security breaches is the responsibility of every company and its security team. But it goes further. IT, executives, and the entire workforce must be aware of their roles in preventing and reducing threats.

What are the primary components of security posture management?

A company’s security posture comprises, among other things:

• Networks
• Information security
• Network security
• Data security
• Internet security
• Cloud security

The constant state of change

Protecting an organization’s assets requires penetration testing, managing vulnerabilities and vendor risks, preventing breaches, and training employees to become vigilant against social engineering attacks.

As technology changes, so does the attack surface and all its vulnerabilities. Security posture requires adaptability with effective, modern practices:

• Keeping an accurate and comprehensive inventory of all IT assets, on-premise and in the cloud.
• Using security controls like firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDSs), and processes like security information and event management (SIEM).
• Identifying potential attack vectors like email, malware, and social engineering threats.
• Automating security posture processes, like assessment, prioritization, and monitoring, in order to reduce risk.

People

People play an important role in maintaining a secure environment. Proactive, standardized security procedures can bring departments together with IT and security teams. This includes developing a framework for everyone to follow so vigilant security communications remain consistent.

Coordinating teams with a collaborative approach to security helps organizations streamline solutions across every department. This way, teams learn to share critical data across all channels.

Processes

Security management has to keep pace with the proliferation of new vulnerabilities at every turn. To remain vigilant, companies must establish effective management in several steps across the security lifecycle. This includes:

• Centralizing your cyber risk data for all stakeholders in order to better share visibility.
• Visualizing and identifying common weaknesses to better understand your vulnerabilities.
• Developing your knowledge and awareness of the root causes of threats.
• Prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their potential impact, how easily they can be exploited, and how easy they are to mitigate.
• Automating risk mitigation, including real-time insights.
• Reporting identified vulnerabilities, remediation, and progress in order to track performance.

Teams can use these effective processes to recognize and reduce risk across entire organizations.

Technology

Technology is the most direct component involved in managing an organization’s attack surface data. As companies adopt new technology for productivity, efficiency, and to scale operations, these applications become data sources that can broaden your attack surface.

Your cyber security platform is used to consolidate vulnerability scan data from numerous sources of threat intelligence so you can understand and assess risk. A unified operational view of your infrastructure and assets lets you see your security risks across all attack surfaces.

This data is integrated from scanners and threat intelligence sources to provide you with automated awareness and real-time updates to manage risk.

Objectives of security posture management

The goal of optimal security posture management is to elevate an organization’s resilience and preparedness against cyber attacks. This is achieved by:

• Assessing cyber security readiness
• Developing and maintaining a comprehensive account of assets
• Uncovering potential risks and vulnerabilities
• Mitigating risks
• Establishing processes, policies, and procedures
• Aligning security with an organization’s goals and objectives
• Maintaining alignment with compliance and regulations

Following these security objectives helps an organization maintain a healthy connection between assets, individuals, and the external communications and technologies that could expose it to threats.

Benefits of security posture management

While the obvious purpose of proper cyber security management is to protect a company and its assets from cyber crimes, there are numerous specific benefits. Below, we discuss the most prevalent gains.

Awareness

Understand your company’s strengths and weaknesses to better recognize the nature of the cyber threats it faces.

Visibility

Proper management comes from having a complete view of your assets and your corresponding attack surface.

Efficient response

Quicker response comes from awareness and preparedness, which results in a better chance of containing risks before they can cause lasting damage to your infrastructure or data.

Compliance

A thorough management system helps you avoid penalties and fines related to regulatory security standard requirements in your field.

Continuity

Businesses suffer substantial financial and strategic losses if their security is compromised. Robust management and asset protection help your entire operation continue on course.

Challenges in effective security posture management

We see a continuous leap forward in emerging technologies like AI and machine learning (ML). This is rapidly transforming industries, like the complex logistics in manufacturing, new efficiencies in the supply chain, and the way networks empower the dramatic scaling of new software platforms.

A noted increase in how cyber criminals tap into these innovations to forge sophisticated new attacks accompanies these breakthroughs.

Each broad field faces unique challenges when dealing with cyber risks. Traditional protections for network vulnerabilities may not be sufficient for these rapid changes.

Challenges with SaaS security posture management (SSPM)

Companies rely upon numerous SaaS applications, each from different vendors, generating a complex multi-cloud environment that dramatically expands potential points of vulnerability in the attack surface.

Maintaining central visibility for different platforms with unique configurations requires a deep and comprehensive investigation into every setting and administrative control.

Integrating third-party platforms can introduce challenges from a lack of uniformity and standardization from the organization’s IT and security teams and the individuals using various SaaS features.

Challenges with cloud security posture management (CSPM)

Cloud presents complex challenges, where platforms provide off-site services both for computation and for data storage. Organizations share specific responsibilities in administration and security, and every agreement can be unique.

There are challenges with configuration and interfacing issues, user access controls, and ensuring that your organization is in compliance with data residency, further complicating not only how systems are protected—but also where. The issue of maintaining high-security standards may require dedication from the organization and equal vigilance from the provider.

Challenges with application security posture management (ASPM)

ASPM is the process of continuous security monitoring and management of an organization’s applications. For development companies, ASPM can involve integrating DevSecOps processes into their development lifecycle, so automated security is woven into every stage of development. 

ASPM takes service libraries, APIs, sensitive data, and other application-specific elements of operations into account.

On-demand webinar: Putting Cyber Security Data to Work at Scale

5 best practices for effective security posture management

The ideal outcome in cyber security is an organization’s ability to reduce its exposure to potential threats. Best practices effectively lower the likelihood a breach will occur to known vulnerabilities. Presented below are five proven methods for managing risk.

1. Conduct regular security assessments

Consistency reduces the likelihood of a threat going unrecognized. This involves proactively evaluating your vulnerability and maintaining awareness of new potential threats as they emerge.

2. Implement a risk-based approach

With a risk-based security posture management approach, an organization prioritizes security based on its unique needs, assets, risks, and vulnerabilities. Every organization faces distinct threats that must be assessed and prioritized to allocate resources appropriately.

3. Establish security policies and procedures

Developing effective systems and processes can take company-wide planning, but when IT and security teams are united in safety guidelines and security compliance practices, they reduce the likelihood of overlooking a breach while speeding up their response time.

4. Provide security awareness training

Social engineering tactics like baiting, phishing, and other forms of psychological manipulation work because they are designed to circumvent human tendencies and oversight. 

In 2022, the most common cyber crimes reported from individuals were phishing scams, affecting 300,497 individuals.

This is why it is critical to a successful security management strategy that your workforce is trained to recognize potential threats. Your employees form the strongest defense when they’re aware and prepared.

5. Leverage security automation and orchestration tools

Automated processes increase your organization’s awareness of threats while reducing the time needed to respond should a breach occur. Automation is tireless and continuous, and when it is linked to robust tools for optimization, assessment, and remediation, you have the best opportunity to prevent a major attack.

On-demand webinar: Prioritize and Mitigate Cloud Vulnerability Risk with Attack Path Modeling

Tools and solutions for security posture management

Organizations are most attentive when they have maximum visibility over their assets. This level of awareness comes from using a cyber security platform with a centralized, unified view of the entire attack surface, complete with automated tasks and extensive administrative controls.

Take control of your security posture management

Vulcan Cyber’s platform is the answer to better threat visualization, monitoring, prioritization, and risk mitigation. Discover how superior security posture management protects your organization. Check out the market’s only free vulnerability prioritization tool, and try a demo of our enterprise solution today.