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- Digital transformation has become a major initiative and shift in the cybersecurity industry. A lot of organizations are undergoing this transformation, and this shift is driving increased global cybersecurity focus due to the sheer amount of data. The collected data starts to mount up and get cluttered, and unless you are a security analyst it will not make much sense to you.
- IT-OT Convergence: The need for modernization and driving more efficiencies there is a growing convergence between the IT and OT networks. This shift means additional assets that transcend both IT and OT networks which necessitates a more holistic approach to cybersecurity that covers both.
- Changing cybersecurity stakeholders: It is no longer just the CISO, security analyst or administrator who are the key stakeholders. The CEO and board are increasingly involved and are asking for details around the organization’s cybersecurity. CISOs are expected to provide understanding as we all as actionable insights so that the executives can take actions and make decisions.
- With a changing threat landscape, an ever-evolving threat surface and new threat vectors, traditional static cybersecurity methods such as spreadsheets, reports or even modular GRC tools are no longer enough or effective. This leaves decision-makers in the dark while the data becomes outdated and non-reusable. There is a need for dynamic, real-time and actionable insights.
- While long and detailed reports are acceptable for security analysts and administrators, CEOs and the board need simple, actionable metrics that tell a visual story of the state of cybersecurity of their company. This story should be easy to understand and to act upon. There is a need for a unified view that combines data from key cybersecurity controls, rolls it up into a single actionable dashboard and provides clear insights of their cybersecurity posture
"Gartner clients are also reporting that after years of quarterly reporting on cybersecurity to their boards, that boards are now pushing back and asking for improved data and understanding of what they have achieved after years of such heavy investment.” - Gartner The Urgency to Treat Cybersecurity as a Business Decision, 2020Data visualization is a key requirement for such a tool. It makes the practice of understanding cybersecurity data easier and actionable. With a combination of visualization tools, analytics algorithms ( rule-based or AI/ML based ) data can be sorted and converted into metrics and values to shed light on the cybersecurity posture as well as provide actionable information. Data visualization can help your organization in many ways including detection, prediction and prevention.
So how does data get visualized and consumed?
Enter dashboards. A dashboard is a customizable visual representation of your data. It allows you to see what is happening in your network, which helps your cybersecurity team to identify, prevent or predict cybersecurity incidents faster. Some of the key benefits of this approach are as follows:- Visualization helps you to make sense of volumes of complex data by noticing patterns, understanding contexts and not missing important information.
- Visualization eliminates the need to spend too much time analyzing data and reduces the risk of overlooking key information.
- Visualization allows the team to take quick actions. They can quickly contain a breach before it reaches its full potential and does significant harm to your business.
- Data visualization is highly customizable. You can filter data to be represented as needed, thus allowing the team to visualize important data in a way that makes the most sense to them.
- A unified view of the different cybersecurity controls in a single place, providing a quick assessment of the cybersecurity posture.
- Offers something for everyone, from operations personnel to executives.
- Presents risk in a prioritized way so that you can tackle the most important/relevant first.
- Different metrics and values allow you to manage risk via prevention and prediction.
- Vulnerabilities (VM): The solution provides a dashboard view as well as details around vulnerabilities in your network along with a risk matrix that allows you to know the most critical vulnerabilities as well as which ones to prioritize first.
- Policies (SCM): The SCM dashboard tracks an organization’s ability to maintain compliance to a resilient state. Failures in Policy should be investigated and remediated to prevent breaches and outages.
- Changes (FIM): Change is good. When change becomes bad, you need to understand it, and you need to evaluate if the process for change needs improvement. The FIM dashboard can help you to identify unauthorized or unexpected changes.