What is Threat Management? Common Challenges and Best Practices

Importance of Cyber Threat Management

With the ever increasing number of threats and complex network and system attacks, organizations are constantly struggling to keep up with mitigation and prevention solutions. According to an article from IBM on the Cost of a Data Breach, businesses and other organizations can save an average of $1.2 million when breaches are detected sooner. Detecting cyber threats is more important to organizations now than ever. Threat management increases the collaboration between common technology security processes and people, giving businesses the best chance at detecting threats and responding to them sooner. 

When a business or organization is successfully able to implement a cyber threat management framework, they can benefit from a variety of helpful solutions including:

• Develop a unified security team through education, skills, and effective threat management solutions
• Improvement through built-in process reporting and measurement throughout the threat management lifecycle
• Lower risk and faster detection of threats, leading to consistent vulnerability investigations and faster solution response

Common Challenges Managing Cyber Threats

It is often hard to protect against advanced persistent threats and other threats from insider sources. Many security leaders across the cyber security industry often find themselves faced with challenges in a security network or system. 

System Visibility is Little to None

Security teams do not always have the available resources to obtain a complete view of their entire threat landscape with relevant context. Teams often need visibility to internal data such as HR users, cloud information, and databases. They also need visibility to external data including threat intelligence, dark web information, and social media sources. 

This lack of visibility is often caused by the conflict that exists between the lack of integration between point solutions, information technology security teams, and inconsistent processes throughout the organization. IBM estimated that corporations can use as many as 80 different security products from over 40 different vendors. The convoluted nature of excessive amounts of security products clouds visibility for those who need it most. 

Lack of Insights and Necessary Reporting

A security team does not necessarily have insight into specific KPIs that need to be tracking down. Additionally, there is no easy way to develop progress reports that identify maturity standards and compliance due to a lack of integration between the organization’s point solutions. 

Additionally, it can often become difficult to align security teams on a unified goal for an organization if the teams are measured against different KPIs. Many cyber security experts believe that the complexity of an IT environment ranks among some of the biggest security challenges faced in creating a cybersecurity threat management program. 

Burnout and Shortage of Staff and Their Skills

Security leaders are having a tough time hiring qualified talent and keeping the current staff motivated due to a skill shorting in the market, as well as analyst burnout. This has made it difficult to find additional staff budgets, meaning security leaders have to find unique ways to use talent from other cross-functional units including customer support and technical sales. Then these employees are trained to become effective in their new field of work. 

Effective Managing Cyber Threats: Best Practices

An organization needs to unite defenses and response to stop threats faster and more efficiently if they wish to succeed and grow rapidly. When a solid framework is applied, effective threat management is achieved. This framework typically includes one or more practice methods including:

• Unified Insight. Awareness of current threat operations can be used to tailor your organization's management plan to meet the unique needs of your organization.
• Access to Visibility. Access into the threat landscape with services to test an organization’s system for risks can integrate security and non-security data resources.
• Risk Detection. Identifying the most critical threats to an organization through the integration of AI, attack models, and intelligence systems from years of securing well known companies.
• Use of Investigation Tools. Investigation with the help of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics across data sources with multiple degrees of capabilities.
• Effective Response. Response to automated actions against common threats provide organizations with a business-wide playbook for the orchestration of threat management across people and technological processes. 
   

Threat Management Solutions

It is essential for organizations to unite people and technological processes to stop threats faster and more effectively as these organizations continue to struggle with increasingly frequent and complex attacks. Threat management can provide a solid framework to develop insights into a threat landscape, help businesses detect threats and vulnerabilities quicker, investigate with smart AI tactics and analytics, and remediate threats in a short time frame using automation and organization. 

A cyber security threat management approach is beneficial for businesses of all sizes, from small businesses to enterprises, like using Fortra Vulnerability Management to detect cybersecurity weaknesses.

The ability to view and manage any potential threats and vulnerabilities to your organization is essential in protecting its system and network. A solid threat management platform should be a primary component to your organization's protection against attackers and system or network exploits.