(BeyondTrust, June 2018) The recent US Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit included insights and best practices from some of the most respected people in the industry. During the conference, Gartner VP Neil MacDonald helped address the challenge facing CISOs today by identifying the top ten list of new security projects to explore in 2018. The reason: focusing on these top ten security projects will reduce the maximum amount of risk and drive the most organisational value.
The Gartner Top 10 Cybersecurity Projects for 2018
Here’s what Gartner identified as the top ten cybersecurity projects CISOs should tackle first:
- Privileged account management (PAM)
- CARTA-inspired vulnerability management
- Active anti-phishing
- Application control on server workloads
- Microsegmentation on flow visibility
- Detection and response
- Cloud security posture management
- Automated security scanning
- Cloud access security broker (CASB)
- Software-defined perimeter
BeyondTrust Can Assist – Beginning with PAM
Following Gartner’s guidance, CoreSight and BeyondTrust can assist security teams in delivering on not just the #1 security priority, but also #2, #4, #5 and so on. And organisations can maximise the value of their existing security investments through integrating much of this technology together under a unified visibility and control platform. (BeyondTrust delivers a fully integrated privileged access management platform (#1) with built-in vulnerability insights (#2). BeyondTrust’s best practices approach to PAM guide outlines the following steps:
1: Improve accountability and control over privileged passwords. With 81% of data breaches involving privileged credentials, security teams can achieve immediate return by reducing this attack surface.
2: Implement privilege management and application control across Windows and Mac. Once accounts and assets have been identified and are consistently managed, the next step to complete PAM is implementing least privilege on end user machines. With 95% of Microsoft system vulnerabilities mitigated via reducing privileges on standard end user machines, this is usually an easy quick win.
3: Leverage application-level risk to improve privilege decisions. This is where building in vulnerability insights (the #2 priority in Gartner’s list) is critical. Vulnerability-based application management is patented technology that automatically scans applications for vulnerabilities at runtime – triggering alerts, reducing application privileges, or preventing launch altogether based on policy. Never grant privileges to a risky application again.
4: Do away with sudo (finally!) Why risk your critical assets (and the data housed on them) using a free, unsupported tool? BeyondTrust provides complete privilege management on UNIX and Linux with integrated file integrity monitoring and more to completely lock down your most critical business apps.
5: Unify management, policy, reporting and threat analytics. Security teams are often overloaded with privilege, vulnerability and attack information. Unifying privilege and vulnerability in a single platform means teams enjoy a single, contextual lens through which to view and address user and asset risk. Again, it’s about leveraging your security investment.
6: Integrate Unix, Linux, and Mac into AD. Admins are often overloaded, and sometimes make mistakes. Enabling admins to log on to all their managed systems with their standard user login will simplify their lives, and improve security.
7: Real-time change auditing and recovery for Windows environments. With non-Windows systems integrated into AD, the next step is to audit user activity to gain additional insight into AD changes that could impact the business.
Take the Next Step
Where to begin? Gartner has identified what your top 10 security priorities should be. And, BeyondTrust, a Gartner-recognised leader in Privileged Access Management, has defined a roadmap to knock out not just #1, but #2 and beyond. Download the definitive guide to privileged access management best practices, Seven Steps to Complete Privileged Account Management, today. Or, contact us for a strategy session.