‘Global 2000’ is a listing by Forbes of the top 2,000 public companies in the world. The list is released once per year, and is based on the company’s performance in four areas: sales, profits, assets, and market value. The company ForeScout is one of Silicone Valley’s tech businesses, specializing in networking security. ForeScout just released a new report, designed to assess the status of Global 2000 companies in terms of network security.
Most Enterprises Have IT Security Blind Spots
The findings? Not as encouraging as one might hope. Most of these enterprises have blind spots when it comes to network security and the devices and users logging into their networks every day. In fact, 72 percent of those businesses have experienced five or more network security incidents within the past 12 months.
One of the factors contributing to the blindness is theinflux of connected devices, including smartphones, mobile computers (like tablets and notebooks), and IoT (Internet of Things) devices. What does it take to identify those blind spots and get these vulnerabilities covered to prevent future attacks? Today’s enterprises desperately need immediate visibility into the devices that are being used to access their networks, plus the ability to automate responses to threats for immediate and decisive action.
More Automated Products Could Improve IT Security
Almost all IT professionals believe that they need more and better pre-determined security controls instead of more warm bodies to fill chairs and monitor networks and system activities. Most businesses, even at the top-tier enterprise level, are working shorthanded and believe that automated security solutions are the perfect option for providing higher levels of security, while stressing critical resources (including IT personnel) the least. IT professionals most wanted to automate security controls for firewalls (63 percent), IPS (65 percent), and antivirus (65 percent).
However, there is a flip-side to this coin. Some IT security pros believe that though technology now does, and will in the future, serve a critical role in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of IT security within the enterprise, there is a point at which we become overly dependent on automated security solutions, leading to too few people and processes to oversee the actual performance of the security technologies. Algorithms can do a lot of the grunt work, but it takes living, breathing IT pros to make sure the the technology is doing what it’s supposed to do.
Other Findings in the Network Security Report
There were some other interesting findings in the report, in addition to the blind spots in network security.
- Using the wrong products can lull businesses into a false sense of security.
- The most serious blind spots were found in firewalls, the assessments of IT security vulnerabilities, and ATD, or advanced threat defense.
- Network security would be well served with more automated controls.
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