Does Your Cybersecurity Software Have These Key Features?

By Microsoft Security

The threat landscape is more sophisticated than ever, and damages have soared as cybercriminals become smarter and their attacks grow savvier. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the cost of cybercrime totaled more than USD 6.9 billion in 2021 alone. This highlights how important it is for businesses to go on the offensive when protecting their operations against online threats.

However, it’s easy for security leaders to become overwhelmed by the sheer number of cybersecurity tools available on the market today. And that growth is accelerating. Fortune Business Insights projects that the global cybersecurity market will grow from $155.83 billion in 2022 to $376.32 billion by 2029, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate of 13.4%. So, given this predicted trajectory, how should organizations evaluate their current technology suite against today’s most pressing threats?

The following are key features to consider when auditing the different tools in your arsenal.

Improve protection by understanding the threat landscape

When security teams develop a protection plan, they must customize it to guard against their organization’s biggest risk factors. Threat actors constantly change their methodology to confuse and evade existing cybersecurity protections. Furthermore, because any device connected to the internet is susceptible to vulnerabilities, the threat landscape is constantly expanding. Understanding the gaps that can lead to vulnerabilities is key to building resilience.

When examining your current cybersecurity software, ensure it empowers your security team with the proper volume, depth, and scale of intelligence. Your software should be able to track new and emerging threats while also connecting that information to historical cyber intelligence so that your organization can fully understand the threat landscape in which it operates. This approach allows security operations centers (SOCs) to better understand specific organizational threats and harden their security posture accordingly.

Uncover vulnerabilities by viewing your business through the eyes of threat actors

Organizations need to see their business the way an attacker can so they can eliminate gaps and strengthen their security posture to help reduce the potential for attack. Many businesses have internet-facing assets they may not be aware of or have simply forgotten. Typically, this is due to shadow IT, mergers and acquisitions, incomplete cataloging, business partners’ exposure, or simply rapid business growth.

Your entire suite of cybersecurity tools should be able to work together to build a complete catalog of your environment and identify all internet-facing resources—even the agentless and unmanaged assets. For example, do any of your tools offer continuous monitoring features? Continuous monitoring prioritizes new vulnerabilities without the need for agents or credentials. With a complete view, organizations can take recommended steps to mitigate risk by bringing unknown resources, endpoints, and assets under secure management within their security information and event management (SIEM) and extended detection and response (XDR) tools. 

Of course, all of this information is just the tip of the iceberg. For more information about today’s most pressing cybersecurity threats, check out our recent webinar, “Stop Ransomware with Microsoft Security.” You can also explore the Microsoft Security page to learn about new advances in cybersecurity technology and emerging threat vectors.