Moving Beyond Point Solutions to Identify Real Risks

As information systems have become increasingly central to mission-critical operations, organizations have been moving to aggressively protect data by implementing a wide range of security point products – from firewalls and antivirus applications to intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and network access control (NAC) solutions.

However, the fact remains that IT systems and their valuable backend data stores remain in the crosshairs of an increasingly sophisticated cybercriminal element. Well-funded by everyone from organized crime to foreign governments, threats still often go undetected and unstopped by traditional defenses, and reports of data breaches continue to hit the morning papers.

Cybercriminals are still finding their way around, and through, point security defenses.

In response to these risks, IT leaders have recognized the need to test and monitor their security defenses, policies and end-user awareness programs. This is typically addressed by a combination of security event and incident management (SEIM) systems and a variety of network vulnerability scanners, web scanners and point auditing solutions.

These tools provide a useful start to the security assessment process, but their collective output can be overwhelming, inconclusive, and laden with long lists of potential flaws and false positives – requiring extensive analysis before remediation and other security improvements can even begin.

Organizations facing IT security data overload often pour more money into additional defenses, without knowing where their most critical weaknesses lie.

Despite a flood of disparate security information from every corner of the organization, business and IT leaders are often left without answers to basic questions, such as:

“Are we more secure than we were yesterday?”
“Which security investments really work, and are they worth the expense?”
“If we were targeted with an attack, would be able to prevent it? Could we even detect it?”

The fact remains that, short of experiencing an actual breach, most organizations don’t have a clear reading of their overall information security stance – let alone actionable data for identifying and fixing specific security weaknesses that can pose immediate operational risks. Unfortunately, they often attempt to solve this issue by pouring still more money into point defenses, without real knowledge of where their most critical weaknesses lie.

The most effective answer to this problem is the use of comprehensive, systems-independent security testing in the form of the CORE IMPACT family of software solutions.

CORE IMPACT provides comprehensive testing of your overall security posture.

By using CORE IMPACT to augment their point product defenses, and make the most of results derived from passive testing technologies including vulnerability scanners, organizations can quickly:

Gain actionable data for isolating and prioritizing their greatest areas of potential risk
Find weaknesses in, and gaps between, their security point solutions
Emulate multistaged attacks that move across multiple systems and layers of infrastructure
Determine the efficacy and ROI of existing defense mechanisms
Gauge the likelihood of their employees to fall for social engineering ploys
Verify their compliance with government and industry regulations
Illustrate the strength of their defenses to internal and external auditors

By identifying and validating your most critical, exploitable risks, CORE IMPACT enables you to intelligently remediate vulnerabilities and prioritize security initiatives in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

Ultimately, Core Security Technologies provides unmatched visibility into real risks that threaten your organization -- allowing you to maintain an unwavering level of security assurance across your diverse IT infrastructure.