Still Performing Old-school Vulnerability Assessments? Here’s What You’re Missing

Still Performing Old-school Vulnerability Assessments? Here’s What You’re Missing

Businesses live or die based on their IT infrastructure. No company can afford to underestimate the danger that a single network breach or hardware failure can cause. We’re talking about major downtime, disrupted productivity, missed targets, and unhappy clients turning to your competitors for faster solutions.

Vulnerability assessments are crucial to identify and mitigate IT risks. Innovators leverage cutting-edge technology to deliver assessments that protect companies against potential issues on a daily basis. But if you’re still performing old-school vulnerability assessments, you could be making your business more susceptible to problems than it has to be.

Here’s what you’re missing.

A proactive approach to mitigating risks

One of the most important reasons old-school vulnerability assessments are so dangerous is that system changes can render them irrelevant within a matter of hours. For businesses which still conduct annual assessments of their IT infrastructure, there’s a real danger that severe risks can be missed during those intervening months.

This encompasses different areas. First and foremost, there are cybersecurity threats to consider.

Your current security measures may become outdated between assessments and leave your business vulnerable to breaches by hackers. Research shows that in 60 percent of cases, vulnerabilities allowing unauthorized access could be fixed with a readily-available patch. On average, data breaches cost as much as $3.92 million on average.

Cybersecurity is one area of IT infrastructures which you must take seriously. Hackers’ methods evolve at a startling rate, forcing organizations to remain vigilant and take a proactive approach to their defenses.

Cutting-edge monitoring is ongoing. The latest security technologies mimic hackers’ processes and techniques to identify where action is required to combat breaches. This enables organizations to recognize the flaws of their current security and which steps are necessary to fix them.

Furthermore, cybersecurity vendors you work with are continuously evaluated to pinpoint when they fail to comply with your business’s security policies or when security levels change.

Old-school assessments just can’t live up to this level of insight and awareness. So much can change in the period between one check and another.

Third-party vendor monitoring

So much of modern business relies on third-party vendors. Businesses of all sizes utilize cloud-based solutions for everything from customer service and team communications to accounting. And that’s great, because quality vendors help organizations to streamline operations and automate time-consuming tasks.

But companies place a lot of trust in vendors to provide a safe, secure, efficient standard of service at all times. The best suppliers are committed to doing just that. But sometimes, some may fall short of expectations.

Running irregular assessments of suppliers’ activities and services means you may be unaware of any oversights or failures. For example, a supplier may have implemented changes that mean it no longer aligns with your internal security policies, but you have no idea of this because so many months have passed since you last checked.

Furthermore, you want to rest assured that all suppliers your business works with comply with official regulations and standards (such as GDPR or CCPA). Any failures here can leave you facing legal difficulties and potentially high costs.

The latest solutions enable you to create security and compliance questionnaires to find out how third-party vendors follow regulatory measures. They also help you to determine how suppliers align with your own policies. On top of all this, innovative solutions reveal gaps in security to suppliers to help them deliver a higher standard of service.

As a result, you can make better decisions about the brands you work with and avoid unnecessary legal challenges that can be so damaging to your credibility.

A heightened awareness of technical issues

Cybersecurity is far from the only danger an inefficient IT setup brings. If your hardware is outdated and overdue an upgrade, you could be at risk of technical failures. This is especially problematic if you store data on-site and never take advantage of cloud backup. You would be unable to recover crucial information and work in the aftermath of a disaster, such as a fire, flood, theft, etc.

And that brings all manner of problems. Employee, client, and financial data may all be exposed. Workflows would be heavily affected, reducing productivity and customer satisfaction. Significant financial impact could leave your business unable to keep operating as required. 

Ongoing vulnerability assessments can determine how suitable your hardware and applications are for your business purposes. Old-school assessments conducted once or twice a year might not bring relevant issues to the surface until it’s too late. Leverage the latest assessment methods and technologies to protect your company against the risk of technical failures.

Understanding human error

Sadly, the people driving businesses are capable of making mistakes. This can be as simple as forgetting to update a password for a tool regularly or deleting a valuable field of data. But whatever the specifics, human error can make a sizable impact on a company’s security and performance.

In Canada’s legal and financial sectors, human error is cited as the biggest cause of data breaches, and a single mistake could open the door for hackers to gain unauthorized access to your network.

New vulnerability assessment solutions can incorporate human behavior to help recognize possible flaws, and help businesses take action to reduce their risk. For example, software and processes which have the potential to be confusing to users may be revised. Alternatively, training can be implemented to educate staff on software for greater peace of mind.

Old-school vulnerability assessments simply don’t offer the comprehensive insights which successful businesses need today. It’s not enough to check systems occasionally and trust them to work. Companies must take advantage of real-time data and detailed overviews to understand what risks they face in the digital age.

At The Driz Group, our expert team offers ongoing vulnerability assessments, penetration testing and third-party risk assessment as a service to identify issues with your infrastructure and protect your data accesses by third-party suppliers. This helps to remediate core IT risks and achieve maximum efficiency.

To book your own free web application and external network vulnerability assessment, get in touch now!