IT Security: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt

If you don’t think about it much, it would seem that the test of an effective information security program is when all is quiet - nothing is happening. The reality that IT professionals know all too well, though, is that “nothing” can either be a good thing, or a bad thing. It can mean you’ve got everything buttoned up tight. But it’s just as likely that you’re blind to nefarious activity happening right under your nose.

Bad actors who gain access to your systems will spend as much time as possible lurking without detection, looking for opportunities to steal data, orchestrate an attack, or cause mischief. And you can be just as vulnerable from unethical or disgruntled employees: people with free-and-clear access to your most sensitive information. The whole point of bad activity is to get away with as much as possible, for as long as possible, without being detected.

The only way to be truly comforted by a peaceful security situation is with data. You need to know that the quiet you’re experiencing isn’t due to the stealth of bad actors. If you’re not actively looking for security vulnerabilities, that doesn’t mean they’re not there. You can’t wait until a problem becomes obvious – you need to have a way to assess the security of your IT environment with consistency and regularity.

Choosing the right security assessments

A thorough security review will look for signs of intrusion, suspicious logins, password issues, and compromised accounts. It will be designed to detect nefarious activity as well as signs that policies need to be updated or reinforced. But in order to remain confident that your IT environment remains secure, assessments need to be regular, consistent, reliable, and easy to interpret. Without these components, a security assessment is only as good as the moment in time that it measures:

• Regular assessments – It’s easy to see how major issues can be missed if a security audit is performed just once a year, or only when a potential concern crops up. The key to regular security assessments is having a tool that’s automated, cost effective, and easy to use so you can get reports frequently and assess changes over time.

• Consistency – In order to detect things that are out of the ordinary, you’ll need to establish what ordinary looks like. This is done by conducting the same assessment at several points in time. Relying on human detective work or a manual process makes it nearly impossible to assure that the same thing is being looked at the same way each time.

• Reliability – It’s possible to design custom scripts for a security review, but choosing an assessment tool that’s been vetted and implemented in dozens of organizations makes it difficult to question the results.

• Easy to interpret – When it comes to something as serious as a company’s IT security posture, you don’t want reports that are vague, confusing, or incomplete. If results are open to interpretation, you can bet there will be divergent – and potentially un-helpful – points of view. Security discussions that involve budget or policy changes need to engage senior executives, and often the best way to accomplish your objectives in the C-suite is with a clear, intuitive data display.

We designed Voleer assessments to make it easy to check all these boxes. Our consistent, easy-to-use, automated assessments produce beautiful reports that take the pain and uncertainty out of IT security monitoring. With all this data in-hand, IT teams can focus on the most meaningful projects rather than tedious manual processes. 

Easy to use security assessments

Regular, consistent security assessments will help target investments to the most important IT projects, whether that’s infrastructure changes, policy modifications, or increased training and awareness. Without the data, it’s hard to pinpoint accounts that should have different levels of access, for example, or users who are working around password policies.

Using Voleer security assessments, companies are looking at how effective their policies are and whether changes need to be made. They understand that a policy is only as good as its enforcement and compliance. While employees – and even executives – may give lip service to common-sense procedures, data tells the real story.

While nothing may look out of order on the surface, some companies use Voleer assessments to identify changes that will strengthen security. Actions may include updating Microsoft 365 licenses in order to implement multi-factor authentication, or implementing a communication plan to reinforce the importance of strong passwords.

The safest way to assess IT security

An IT team or IT service provider (ITSP) recommending security assessments shouldn’t be surprised if the idea provokes some questions. Can the assessments be done safely? What’s the potential that the assessment itself introduces vulnerabilities to the environment? These are valid issues that need to be addressed before you proceed. The best choice is an assessment tool that’s non-invasive, where access is completely controlled by the internal IT team.

Voleer assessments are implemented without the need for anyone outside the organization to have access to the environment. No login credentials need to be shared because the tools use  Device Code Authentication. This means the internal IT team always retains control, and they can discontinue access at any time. This allows the person using Voleer assessments to obtain the information needed without any chance of disrupting the environment.

Voleer assessments

By far the most important reason to implement Voleer security assessments is to keep IT environments safe from intruders and bad actors. You hope to never discover a serious breech, but it’s better to keep looking than close your eyes.

Voleer assessments provide other benefits as well. When you’re able to share good quality data with company decision makers, you can have productive conversations about ways to protect the company while supporting innovation, flexibility, and productivity.

Many ITSPs use Voleer assessments to build additional business with service packages tailored to the specific issues highlighted in the reports. Internal IT teams find that budget discussions go much smoother when requests are backed by findings specific to the company’s environment.

Finally, Voleer assessments are an easy way of making you and your team look good. They give you simple tools to proactively scan the environment and deliver beautiful reports that stimulate quality discussions. Image isn’t everything, but it is something.

Get all the assessments you need in one place

To get started, check out the Security Toolkit. And don’t forget to check out our free trial if you haven’t yet tried Voleer.

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