Our research shows that security leaders would need to find a 40% budget increase to restore confidence in their security posture.
It's unsurprising that a lack of security skills and budget - both for training as well as general cybersecurity - are key concerns among CISOs and security leaders.
A staggering 74% of cybersecurity professionals feel that the shortage of security resources negatively impacts their ability to effectively manage security posture.
By embracing automation and vendor consolidation, organizations can lighten the burden on the security workforce, improve proactive security posture management and create a more efficient security program.
Despite 52% of security professionals stating they would hire more security specialists if they were given a budget increase, simply increasing headcount is not a foolproof solution.
The scarcity of skilled people creates a vicious circle within the security industry, spiraling wages as organizations compete for finite resources, overworked individuals who are forced to cover multiple positions, and high stress levels that often lead professionals to leave the profession altogether.
By leveraging automation for the more laborious tasks and processes, security leaders can not only alleviate the burden on their overworked teams but also move away from the endless cycle of reactive firefighting.
Cybersecurity professionals can focus on more strategic and high-value tasks, such as incident response, patching vulnerabilities and working towards improving security posture, by focusing on meeting strategic priorities rather than getting caught up in manual processes or firefighting.
The EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act mandates continuous monitoring of ICT security, which can only realistically be achieved through automation.
Automation can also help with another requirement of incoming regulation - board oversight of security risk.
This will inevitably bring greater pressure on security teams to provide accurate metrics and measures that give a true picture of their organization's security posture.
Automation will be needed to build confidence in this data while also ensuring the reporting burden doesn't further overwhelm security teams.
Gartner reported that 75% of organizations were pursuing security vendor consolidation in 2022.
Security leaders may be apprehensive about losing certain controls and risking their security posture during the consolidation process.
We found that only 19% of those who haven't started the process of vendor consolidation expect it would improve their security posture.
In reality, consolidation benefits an organization's security posture - 42% who have begun this journey are now seeing a measurable improvement.
The reality is that implementing more security tools does not mean improving your security posture.
Consolidation, when approached strategically, can streamline security operations.
By selecting vendors that offer comprehensive solutions and integrating disparate tools and platforms into a unified ecosystem with clear reporting, companies can simplify their security infrastructure and enhance collaboration among different teams.
By scaling back the number of security vendors and implementing process automation, security teams can be freed up from their current levels of overwhelming reporting and admin.
This Cyber News was published on securityboulevard.com. Publication date: Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:43:20 +0000