Why It Is Important To Take a Holistic View of Your Security Operations
You cannot fix what you cannot see.
This is so true in cybersecurity. You cannot remediate an issue if you cannot detect it. And, in this case, that issue would have grown into a major problem by the time you actually discover it—mostly because it is already doing big-time damage to your IT infrastructure.
Such is a scenario that your organisation can ill afford in this increasingly interconnected and digitised world—not with threats like data breaches and cyber attacks able to cause huge financial losses and compromise your brand’s reputation.
This is why it is crucial for businesses to adopt a holistic view of their security operations, as it is a critical part of a strong security architecture. It is so because of the following reasons:
A Holistic Views Helps in Better Detecting Gaps and Vulnerabilities
The main advantage of implementing a holistic approach to security is having the ability to identify gaps and vulnerabilities across your entire IT infrastructure. By having this holistic approach, you can ascertain that all facets of your infrastructure are secured and that none are overlooked.
With a holistic approach, you can also pinpoint potential weaknesses and problem areas everywhere, from your networks to the applications and devices that connect to them, as well as the humans using them.
Check out this Fortinet white paper explaining the importance of taking a holistic approach to security.
Early Detection Leads to Proactive Action
Having a holistic approach also gives you a comprehensive understanding of your infrastructure so you can implement more effective mitigation strategies and identify problems before they cause significant damage. In other words, it enables you to take a proactive approach to threat detection and response.
By analysing and correlating data from various sources such as network logs, user behaviour and system alerts, you can identify patterns indicative of potential threats, enabling you to detect sophisticated attacks that may otherwise go unnoticed by traditional security measures. Additionally, a holistic approach to security enables real-time monitoring, rapid incident response and effective containment of security breaches, thus minimising the impact of cyber incidents on your operations.
Seeing the Big Picture Lets You Address Complexity and Interdependencies
Your digital ecosystem spans a wide range of interconnected devices, networks, cloud services and third-party integrations. Unfortunately, failure to consider the interdependencies between these components can create weak points that malicious actors can exploit.
Taking a holistic view of security lets you understand better the intricate relationships between these systems, and this understanding will help you strengthen these weak points—if not eliminate them entirely.
Taking Security Holistically
As the Fortinet white paper “Charting A New Course— The Holistic View of Threats and Security” points out, security operations will continue to take centre stage in this digitalising world, and the cost of vigilance will be high “both in terms of investment and the exposures caused by lack of investment.” That being the case, the proper response is paramount to avoid costly incidents that damage the corporate brand and directly impact revenue.
This proper response must go beyond simply deploying the latest products that purport to address the latest threats. This is a fragmented approach, and it only widens the gap between discovery and remediation—a major problem that is solved by “thoughtfully building processes and workflows to cross the chasm between operations and security.”
That is the core of having a holistic approach to security, and it will make a meaningful impact in improving your security posture.
Download this Fortinet white paper to discover how your organisation can take a more holistic approach to security.
