Are you comfortable right now?
Ok, maybe your office chair is an ergonomic wonder and you’re thinking ‘Yes, actually. Very comfortable, thanks.’ But while you’re reclining there, all cocooned by the armrests, ask yourself how comfortable you are with your organisation’s defences. On an average Wednesday afternoon, for example, how comfortable are you that a misconfigured cloud service isn’t about to fling open the door to a cyberattack?
If you’re now thinking, ‘Still pretty comfortable, now you come to mention it. Our team is all over it. Everything’s fine’, then first off: we wish we had your confidence. Second, how much time does it cost your brilliant but stretched team to maintain that compliance? How often do you find yourselves wishing you didn’t have to pour so much time into reviewing alerts and manually triggering updates and patches?
It's a tough life on the frontline
To bring this little metaphor in to land, in our experience, most security professionals in SMBs fall into one of two camps. Either they’re losing sleep because they’re worried a career-ending hack might unfold while they’re in bed, or they’re working like stink to keep the security show on the road, just managing to stay one step ahead of the constantly rising tide of alerts and emergent attacks.
Actually, most security professionals fall into both of those camps. Particularly as misconfigurations in cloud environments account for 36% of data breaches. It’s no surprise that scrutiny over the security of the third-party cloud services is on the rise. How confident are you that your cloud infrastructure is fully secured? And how do you keep on top of your risk management when you’ve got so many cloud apps and services you don’t directly own?
We all know the penalties for noncompliance can be harsh, just like the ICO penalties for data breaches. The potential costs of a misconfigured cloud service don’t stop with the regulator and the Information Commissioner. One viciously exploited vulnerability can spell the end of your brand value, the destruction of your customer relationships – and in the worst cases, the end of your business itself.
In short, security professionals are not generally comfortable. Usually, they’re quite worried. Perhaps you can relate.
Let the machines do the heavy lifting
For mid-market companies, budget constraints mean a hiring drive is rarely the solution to this problem. Instead, SMB security teams need to turn to technology to help them maximise the efficacy of their work hours, reduce the number of repetitive, low-value tasks they have to do, and ensure compliance right across their IT landscape.
Posture management solutions are a key way to achieve those goals. By automating the process of identifying and resolving misconfigurations across cloud infrastructure and SaaS apps, they go a long way to lightening the burden on busy cybersecurity teams. Importantly, they can reduce the time between a vulnerability emerging and being fixed – leaving less opportunity for that vulnerability to be exploited.
Solutions like our new compliance module scan the organisation’s whole environment, quickly and clearly highlighting potential vulnerabilities, flagging up the most urgent, and enforcing secure configurations wherever possible. Not only does this reduce the manual workload on the IT team and give them a clearer sense of what actually needs their attention, it also contributes to a fully functional Zero Trust framework. This ensures any back doors into cloud apps and infrastructure are swiftly closed and only those with proper credentials are granted access.
Why automation is your friend
Our Compliance Module also gives businesses a quick and easy tool to help them complete cybersecurity audits and fill in the relevant documentation. Whether it’s industry-wide standards like Cyber Essentials and ISO27001, or sector specific standards, businesses need to be able to prove they’ve done all they can to preserve the security of sensitive data wherever it proliferates – including across cloud infrastructure and SaaS apps.
Because it’s regularly scanning for vulnerabilities and alerting any potential red flags in a simple dashboard, posture management can provide a comprehensive snapshot of the organisation’s compliance measures. It doesn’t just flag issues; it helps fix them fast, minimising your window of exposure and ensuring continuous compliance, helping organisations remain audit-ready. It’s also important to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Censornet’s Compliance Module is personalised to each organisation – helping them understand the risks they care about and reducing the time they need to invest in finding out how to fix it.
If any or all of that sounds like it would be helpful – like it might, in fact, help you sit more comfortably – then you’ve come to the right place. Censornet exists to help businesses like yours achieve blue-chip security, and to give security professionals the tools they need to do their jobs as well as possible in the time they have.
Are you ready to take control of your cloud security and compliance?
Book a demo today to discover how our compliance module can protect your organisation while freeing up your IT team.
