The evolution of the enterprise from a centralised, contained operation, to a sprawling, hybrid model has made it more difficult to use cybersecurity to protect corporate assets from bad actors.

At the same time, cybercriminals have become more sophisticated in their tactics, leaving often under-resourced security teams fighting an uphill battle to secure the enterprise.

Corporate infrastructure makes cybersecurity a struggle

A recently published survey of 1000 executives in 18 countries, Capturing the Cybersecurity Dividend, found much of the struggle associated with security efforts has to do with the infrastructure itself.

Research conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value in conjunction with Palo Alto Networks, noted that the average enterprise has 83 security products from 29 vendors. Some 52% said the single biggest hurdle to successfully safeguarding their assets is the difficulty in managing that security infrastructure.

Security professionals have long complained how hard it is to correlate relevant data from these disparate sources. For these reasons, more than half of the survey participants said the convoluted nature of their security infrastructure is the biggest barrier to maintaining a solid defence.

Platform-based approach can accelerate threat detection

In this case, complexity leads to inefficiency which then translates into costs from losses in productivity and assets. The research noted that the average expense associated with security complexity is more than 5% of an enterprise’s revenue.

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An organisation with $20bn in revenues annually would take a more than $1bn hit related to security events, productivity issues, and reputation damage.

Some organisations are moving away from the ad hoc security architects toward a platform-based approach that streamlines processes and accelerates threat detection. The research reported that, on average, enterprises that deployed a security platform detect an incident 72 days sooner than those running a more piecemeal security infrastructure. Platformed enterprises contain an incident 84 days sooner than those with a hodgepodge of security solutions.

Cybersecurity improvements via AI

Vendors and service providers are also beginning to incorporate and improve upon AI technology in security solutions. Machine learning has been used for years in threat detection to discern real threats from harmless anomalies.

Anecdotally, security professionals report a marked improvement in accuracy and speed of their threat detection solutions over the last several years. Security providers are now using AI in other areas such as identity and access management.

Capabilities such as natural language processing and sentiment analysis make AI a promising element for enterprise risk management. While AI is emerging as an important tool in cybersecurity, it is clear organisations that are struggling to manage their current security and need to take a step.

Enterprises should evaluate on a regular basis the efficacy of their cybersecurity technology, processes, policies and practices. All organisations need a path forward to optimise the resources they have and shed the solutions that aren’t delivering value.