Why Continuous Cyber Security Assessment is Important for Enterprises?

The business sphere has changed quite drastically in the past few years primarily due to the technological revolution that has taken almost every industry by storm and due to the current Covid-19 pandemic situation, it has changed to a whole new level. We can see a massive shift in strategy, with most enterprises starting to highly focus on the cyber security assessment of the digital and IT aspects of their operations.

Due to the current outbreak, according to Kaspersky, UAE had recorded the most attacks of all the GGC states with 34 million malware attacks in just 6 months of 2021. On average, enterprises in UAE were attacked 295 times per week, where UAE had experienced more than 15.8 million brute force attacks on remote desktop protocols in the last 6 months. Due to this massive shift in cyberthreat, 82% of IT decision-makers of enterprises are under pressure to improve their security posture.

Unfortunately, security products have not quite kept pace with the rate of advancement of these cyber threats. That is why you may find that existing security tools are insufficient when it comes to providing adequate testing and fixing opportunities for your enterprise applications and other software products. That is where the continuous cyber security assessment approach comes into the picture.

What is Continuous Security Testing?

Putting it in simple words, Continuous Security Testing is a highly flexible and adaptable practice that challenges, measures and optimizes the effectiveness of a company’s security controls, infrastructure configurations, policy enforcement, and more on an ongoing basis. This practice is also used for applications and similar products for issues early in the development cycle. It is the practice of continuously testing the security controls of an organization or a given application to mitigate potential threats. It is a dynamic way to identify and counter the risks that exist in the digital world and may put the organization’s data and safety at significant risk, compromising brand integrity and client trust.

Why Should Continuous Cyber Security Assessment Be an Essential Part of Your Security Strategy?

There are several reasons why continuous security testing is now believed to be the best possible approach to take when it comes to any organization’s security strategy. Let’s explore how continuous security testing can help you deal with a multitude of security challenges that you may be currently facing or may encounter in the future:

Evolution of Cyber Threats

Every day, we hear about companies and large organizations that are plagued with successful cyberattacks that compromise their data security and integrity. As technology continues to progress, attackers are finding new and improved ways to counter even the most advanced security measures, exploiting the smallest windows to sneak into a protected system and wreak havoc. Continuous security testing is arguably the most effective counter to the question of these ever-evolving cyber risks. With our tailored security services that enable you to run regular simulations, you can effectively optimize your security controls and validate your threat intelligence system.

Delayed Bug Fixing

Bug fixing is the name of the game in the world of application development. However, doing so after the fact can prove to be quite a drastic and costly process. The ideal solution is to identify and address bugs throughout the development cycle as opposed to fixing all the issues collectively at the end. This is possible through Continuous security testing.

An Incomplete Security Snapshot

Most of the currently available tools only give you a limited picture of the current security operations at your organization. Your operations and the makeup of your infrastructure will change on a regular basis, whether there is a change in policy, the introduction of new technology, or a change in staff members. Not accounting for the evolving IT environment will create gaps and blindspots that expose you to risks and threats. With continuous cyber security assessment, you can acquire a more complete and reliable idea of the current security status of your organization as it is highly dynamic and provides information in real time.

Vulnerable Agile Operations

If your organization operates with an Agile approach, continuous security testing becomes something of a necessity. With every change you make to your applications throughout the product life cycle, you can perform simultaneous testing to detect emerging vulnerabilities and nip them in the bud before they potentially go unnoticed and create post-deployment problems.

Budget Drain

While security is undoubtedly a critical part of your company’s strategy, you do not want to spend half of your budget in this regard. Typical penetration testing practices tend to be quite straining on the budget and end up using a majority of the resources without providing many benefits in return. The goal is to maximize the ROI with the tools you choose to use for this purpose. Continuous security testing allows you to do exactly that, letting you identify risks early in the process that helps you extract maximum information in a quick time.

How Does Continuous Security Assessment Work?

With continuous security testing, you will assign a team of experts to consistently measure and optimize security controls at regular intervals of time. To do this, the first step is typically to produce some baseline values with an initial penetration test against which the parameters of the security performance of your application can be tested. These parameters are continuously monitored for changes at a set rate and if any changes are detected, further testing is performed to determine the cause and the ideal solution going forward.

Simulation attacks may also be performed to assess the effectiveness of your existing security strategy. These tests are repeated on a daily/weekly/monthly basis as determined by yourself or your client. Such an approach makes it possible for you to identify risks very early in the process and make the necessary fixes before they make your system vulnerable.

At the End of the Day…

These types of attacks against enterprises will likely continue to occur at a rather high rate. 2020 made it clear that organizations need to enhance their security measures, and a good place to start is to have a continuous cyber security assessment as it has proven to be the ideal approach to help you enhance and solidify the security department of your organization. We have discussed in detail all the challenges that continuous security testing makes ten times easier to manage. Ultimately, the rigorous demands of the digital world require organizations to invest in solutions and practices to mitigate vulnerabilities and liabilities.

Allow Real Secure IT to assist you in the implementation of an effective continuous testing system so that you can stand tall and be protected against the ever-evolving array of cyber threats.

With Continuous security testing, our security team will find your security gaps first instead of waiting for an attack. We shall evaluate your existing security posture, identify the weakest points, develop the ideal testing infrastructure for your use case, and then implement it using solutions that are as efficient, effective, and accurate as anything else available.

Learn more about our Cyber Security Assessment Services.