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Today every click, transaction, and digital interaction opens a new door for cyber criminals.

Companies are increasingly digitizing their operations, which means a significant expansion of their attack surfaces.

Padlock against circuit board/cybersecurity background

One example is the surge in vulnerabilities, with 26,447 disclosed last year alone.

But can they realistically keep up with this increase?

The constant scrambling to address urgent issues makes it near impossible to prioritize their responses effectively.

With studies indicating that organizations can only remediate between 5% to 20% of vulnerabilities per month.

the businesses need an aggregated and contextualized view across all of their security controls to prioritize vulnerabilities.

Yet gaining this view is adatascience challenge that many security teams are unable to solve.

This approach allows security teams to rank vulnerabilities based on their potential impact and the likelihood of being exploited.

The same is true of the rapidly evolving threat landscape, with emerging attack techniques continually moving the goalposts.

This leaves teams stretched thin trying to handle the flood of new vulnerabilities every day.

In fact, today 46% of security teams time is spent on collecting and reporting security data.

This helps with better prioritization, accountability, and teamwork.

Businesses should keep in mind:

Holistic security context:Vulnerabilities should not be viewed in isolation.

By incorporating a broader security context from across the business, security teams can better prioritize their actions.

Vulnerabilities also include configuration issues like defaultpasswordsand weak certificates.

Yet not all tools are deployed ubiquitously, so they only tell their side of the story.

Contextualizing big problems:Understanding the broader context helps break down large problems.

For instance, if a cleaner’s phone is compromised, it may not significantly impact daily operations.

But, if a CEOscomputeris breached, it could lead to a major security incident.

Clear accountability:Establishing clear paths to accountability is key.

This involves assigning clear ownership and defined roles for all business infrastructure and applications.

Questions like How do you know every asset is being scanned?

and How can you demonstrate vulnerabilities have been patched?

are becoming more common.

This big-picture perspective on the organization’s security helps teams spot coverage gaps and allocate resources more strategically.

It also improves accountability and boosts teamwork within security teams since everyone operates from a shared understanding.

This not only strengthens overall security but also ensures that security efforts align with business goals.

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The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc.

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