How Cybersecurity Asset Management Helps Amid Economic Uncertainty

Originally published by Axonius.

Written by Kathleen Ohlson, Axonius.

Trying to understand, manage and protect the disparate parts that make up an IT infrastructure can be one of the biggest challenges — and headaches — for IT and cybersecurity professionals.

With today’s increased economic uncertainty causing companies to question everything from hiring, resources, and other investments, all of this pressure is now hitting teams that are already short-staffed and stressed out.

A tricky balancing act

Even before the current state of the world, time and resources were already in short supply for IT and cybersecurity professionals. They’re battling to prevent, respond to, and mitigate cyberattacks 24/7. On top of all of that, these professionals have to continuously track what lives in their IT environments. Knowing what assets they have — cloud services, software, workstations, personal mobile devices, users, and more — is essential to understanding what’s going on in (and protecting!) their IT environments.

But managing and inventorying these assets is no small feat.

It takes 86 person-hours with eight different tools, on average, to manually compile an asset inventory. Unfortunately, due to the ever-changing nature of cybersecurity environments, the results are already obsolete by the time the inventory is complete.

This time and effort is maxing out teams already stretched thin. There are over 4 million cybersecurity professionals worldwide, yet this workforce needs to grow by 65% for organizations to effectively defend their critical assets, according to the (ISC)² Cybersecurity Workforce Study 2021.

Where does this leave IT and cybersecurity teams in this current economic uncertainty?

Experts believe cybersecurity spending will stay resilient, especially due to regulatory and compliance standards, according to reports. But the pressure is on these teams to protect their organizations’ data. Eighty-eight percent of boards of directors view cybersecurity as a business risk, rather than just a technology one, according to a Gartner survey. As a result, IT and cybersecurity teams can’t afford to spend time manually conducting asset inventories.

So how can IT and cybersecurity teams free people up to focus on other tasks during economic or organizational uncertainty?

The know-how to control complexity

Enter: cybersecurity asset management.

Cybersecurity asset management platforms look at all assets — like cloud services, IoT devices, operational technology infrastructure, and more — no matter where they’re located, and regardless of their uptime or power state. These tools leverage existing data to understand what’s happening with all of the assets in the environment. Cybersecurity asset management platforms provide an up-to-date inventory and uncover security gaps, doing so continuously and in real time. When an asset or user deviates from security protocols and policies, the platform can trigger an automated response action. All of this automatically happens in the background through one solution, so professionals don’t have to go back and forth between tools.

IT and cybersecurity professionals won’t lose hours manually completing tasks, like responding to and triaging security alerts. These teams can move away from reacting to any change — and the day-to-day firefighting that goes with that — to focusing on the big picture.

Another way to extend time and resources

IT and cybersecurity professionals can’t afford to take days to track down the necessary asset data in their IT environments. They need continuous, accurate, up-to-date information to mitigate threats, navigate risks, and decrease incidents. These professionals definitely don’t have time to do all of this manually, especially with their teams overextended. And definitely not with economic uncertainty happening.

In the coming months, IT and cybersecurity professionals will likely need ways to extend their team’s resources. Cybersecurity asset management platforms will help them be proactive, work more efficiently, and stay prepared during these uncertain economic times.