Last updated at Fri, 01 Dec 2023 22:05:38 GMT

The rapid pace of technological change and the attendant rise of cyber threats in both speed and number leave most organizations at a disadvantage.

Historically, many firms faced this challenge simply by purchasing more technology in the hopes that the latest threat protection software would keep their data safe. But those days have come to an end. Not only have budgets come under increased scrutiny, but the sheer number of tools in most environments has become a handicap as well: Tools don’t always work well together and the expertise required to manage them remains in short supply. According to some analysts, the current complexity and diversity of tech environments also hampers visibility into vulnerability risks, at least in part because data must be obtained from disparate systems or laboriously exported into spreadsheets and data analytics platforms to fine tune and understand relevant risks.

For organizations looking for a unified perspective of risk across their cloud and on-prem environments, prioritizing risk, eliminating repetitive manual work, maintaining complete risk visibility, and consolidating point solutions will enable them to meet cyber threats with speed and success.

Not all Threats are Created Equally

You’ll hear companies claim to stop all threats everywhere all the time, but such claims are neither true nor practical – anyone who follows the news even casually knows that the threats keep coming. The key is to understand which threats pose the largest risks and mitigate those first. Tools like Rapid7’s InsightVM analyze enterprise-wide asset and vulnerability data to identify the actions that will have the largest impact on risk reduction in a given organization. Instead of thousand-page lists of individual patches to apply, organizations can make informed, up-to-the-minute decisions on how to allocate resources for maximum risk reduction.

InsightVM also offers live dashboards that update whenever new data is discovered, allowing teams to track the attack surface and risk as they change. Dashboard views can even be customized for different technical teams or stakeholders as organizational perimeters expand into the cloud and beyond. Other approaches, such as cloud risk management, allow organizations to manage, prioritize, and act on risks within the large scale of modern multi-cloud environments and on-prem footprints by helping them understand the potential impact of a particular risk and its likelihood of exploitation.

You Can’t Protect What You Can’t See

In addition to trying to tackle every imaginable risk, maintaining maximum visibility into attack-surface risk is the only way organizations can hope to minimize security gaps while managing the many containers, cloud services, and virtual devices that are often spun up and down without direct involvement from the security team.

While InsightVM integrates directly with dynamic infrastructure to give full visibility into the risks posed by these assets, solutions like Executive Risk View provide complete visibility into hybrid-environment risk by ingesting data with purpose-built collection mechanisms – regardless of whether work is running on-premises or in the cloud.

Executive Risk View also aggregates and normalizes disparate risk assessments from on-premises and cloud environments for a unified, interactive dashboard that brings clarity to discovered vulnerabilities and the risks each represents so that security teams can prioritize remediation actions and share insights cross functionally. Insight into how vulnerabilities translate into business risk – and which of them are most likely to be targeted by attackers – means teams can quickly and effectively address the risks that pose the most significant danger.

Simplify the Stack

Prioritization, automation, and visibility are all foundational elements of unified risk protection, but if organizations rely on multiple vendors to manage them, they will continue to lose efficiencies and battle tool proliferation. Cloud Risk Complete offers all of these solutions from one comprehensive platform and single subscription model. This means organizations can secure hybrid environments from development to production; detect and address risk across endpoints, cloud workloads, and traditional infrastructure; and perform dynamic application security testing to remediate application risk – all with a single subscription.

Learn more about the ways Rapid7 can help increase your security posture.