According to Healthcare IT News, during 2021, 40 million patient records in healthcare environments were vulnerable to exposure due to security incidents.
EdTech Magazine recently reported that during the second half of the 2020-2021 school year, “incidents such as data breaches, ransomware attacks, meeting invasions, and denial of service attacks jumped 60 percent,” according to the K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center.
The banking industry experienced an astounding 1,318 percent increase in ransomware attacks in the first half of 2021, according to Security Magazine. The potential for high-payout rewards drove increases in attacks aimed at government and manufacturing sectors as well, according to the report.
Recognizing and removing known vulnerabilities in enterprise networks is nothing new. However, this can be extremely challenging for IT organizations with highly distributed, complex networks. The massive workforce shift from office to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated the problem.
Depending on tools in use by either network operations (NetOps) and/or security operations (SecOps) teams, finding and addressing such vulnerabilities is more than a “snapshot” effort. Looking once may discover vulnerabilities for remediation and protect the organization for that moment. However, an ongoing effort is necessary to ensure these risks are consistently avoided over time.
Vulnerabilities can include several long-standing issues:
- Expiring secure socket layer (SSL)/transport layer security (TLS) certificates
- Use of weak ciphers
- Known malware and ransomware in a network
These risks can expose organizations to unplanned website outages, hackers executing man-in-the middle attacks, poor encryption protection, or disruptions caused by cybercriminals wreaking havoc with malware and ransomware attacks.
Packet-based monitoring, analysis, and alerting solutions used by NetOps personnel for network and application performance management can provide the right level of visibility and detail for identifying these vulnerabilities. This also enables a broader collaboration between the NetOps and SecOps teams in jointly addressing risks to ensure performance, availability, and reliability are all protected from security weaknesses.
Read this use case to see how one global services organization gained a single source of truth that enabled its NetOps and SecOps teams to collaborate more effectively.
To learn more about how NetOps and SecOps can collaborate more effectively with a single source of truth, read this use case.