The Rise of Automated Security Control Assessment: Balancing Efficiency with Human Insight

Endpoint Security Automated Security Control Assessment: When Self-Awareness Matters

The Importance of Minimizing Software Vulnerabilities

Exploitation of software vulnerabilities has been making headlines recently, leading to the perception that these vulnerabilities are the main cause of data breaches. However, according to the 2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, the exploitation of vulnerabilities is actually less prominent in breaches, dropping from 7% to 5%. Despite this, software vulnerabilities remain one of the primary methods attackers use to gain unauthorized access to organizations, alongside stolen credentials and phishing.

To minimize exposure to software vulnerabilities, organizations need to prioritize effective vulnerability management programs. These programs are crucial for identifying and addressing software vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. However, the complexity of IT environments, including factors such as digitalization, cloud adoption, and the number of installed applications on devices, often hinders the timely detection and remediation of these vulnerabilities.

For example, the 2023 Resilience Index highlights that more than 80% of devices use Microsoft Windows OS, with a large majority on Windows 10. While this may seem homogenous and easy to manage, IT practitioners struggle to keep their employees’ endpoints up to date with fourteen different versions and more than 800 builds and patches present. Additionally, the report reveals that enterprise devices have an average of sixty-seven applications installed, with 10% of devices having more than one hundred applications installed. This high number of applications, combined with the variety of operating system versions and builds, makes it challenging for IT and security teams to maintain and patch them effectively.

As a result, it currently takes an average of 149-158 days for organizations to patch their endpoints’ operating systems. This delay leaves organizations vulnerable to targeted attacks on Internet-facing systems that have not been patched against older, known vulnerabilities. In fact, government agencies in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States have reported that threat actors predominantly targeted systems that were not patched against these vulnerabilities.

Barriers to Successful Vulnerability Management

The effectiveness of traditional vulnerability risk management programs is often hindered by several key challenges:

1. Lack of Visibility

One major challenge is the lack of visibility into an organization’s assets. IT and security practitioners are dealing with a vast number of assets across all computing environments, each of which can be breached in various ways. However, most vulnerability scanners do not work continuously, leading to blind spots and delayed reaction times. Continuous monitoring and analysis of an organization’s attack surface in real-time is essential to identify vulnerabilities and respond to them promptly.

2. Lack of Automation

Another challenge is the lack of automation in vulnerability management processes. Many manual steps, such as vulnerability scanning, detection, verification, impact analysis, and remediation, consume a significant portion of IT team resources. Vulnerability management tools are often used primarily to document compliance with industry standards and regulations, rather than as tools for efficient and automated remediation.

3. Lack of Context

Many companies still rely on vulnerability scores to prioritize their remediation efforts. However, these scores do not correlate with existing threats or reflect the full range of vulnerabilities in the wild. Poor password hygiene, misconfigurations, encryption issues, and risky online behavior of employees are all examples of vulnerabilities that cannot be adequately captured by a vulnerability score.

4. Lack of Insights into Efficacy

Many security solutions, including vulnerability management tools, lack the capability to monitor their own integrity or health. This lack of insight into the efficacy of security controls and applications leaves organizations unable to react to malicious actions, vulnerabilities, or software damage in a timely manner. Continuous collection and analysis of relevant data are necessary to evaluate the efficacy of controls and ensure the health of security applications.

Automated Security Control Assessment (ASCA)

To address these challenges and improve security processes, organizations are shifting from traditional vulnerability management to a continuous process that includes Automated Security Control Assessment (ASCA). ASCA processes and technologies focus on the analysis and remediation of misconfigurations in security controls.

ASCA provides several benefits, including:

1. Verifying Proper, Consistent Configurations

ASCA enhances an organization’s security posture by ensuring that security controls are not only present but also properly and consistently configured. By going beyond the mere existence of security controls, ASCA helps minimize the attack surface caused by security configuration drift, poor defaults, excessive tuning, and high staff turnover.

2. Improving Staff Efficiency

Through automation, ASCA reduces the manual steps involved in vulnerability management, which can consume up to 40% of the IT team’s resources. By streamlining and optimizing the vulnerability management process, ASCA allows IT practitioners to focus on higher-value tasks and improve overall staff efficiency.

3. Enhancing Cyber Resilience

ASCA helps organizations strengthen their cyber resilience in the face of organizational complexity. By continuously assessing and addressing security controls, organizations can better protect their endpoints and minimize their exposure to known vulnerabilities. This proactive approach to security will help organizations withstand and recover from cyberattacks more effectively.

4. Meeting Regulatory Requirements

Enhanced regulations, such as PCI DSS and NIST SP 800-137, are now emphasizing the importance of continuous diagnostics of security controls. ASCA provides the necessary processes and technologies to meet these requirements and ensure compliance with industry standards and government regulations.

Conclusion: The Path to Effective Endpoint Security

In today’s complex IT environments, minimizing software vulnerabilities and effectively managing them is crucial for organizations to maintain their security posture. Traditional vulnerability management programs face numerous challenges, including lack of visibility, automation, context, and insights into efficacy.

To overcome these challenges, organizations should adopt an approach that includes Automated Security Control Assessment (ASCA). ASCA verifies the proper and consistent configurations of security controls, goes beyond the mere existence of controls, improves staff efficiency, enhances cyber resilience, and helps organizations meet regulatory requirements.

By transitioning from mere detection to faster remediation of vulnerabilities, organizations can strengthen their endpoint security and minimize their exposure to cyber threats. It is essential to prioritize self-awareness and continuous security control assessment to protect against evolving cyber risks.