The More Cybersecurity Tools Are In Use, The Less Effective They Will Become, Said IBM

This is again an example of the principle: quantity does not equal quality.

In the modern days of cybersecurity, an increasing number of companies and enterprises are becoming more aware of the internet and what comes with it. To protect their digital assets and data, many of them are investing in tools needed for the task.

According to IBM's research, while investment and planning are on the uptake, effectiveness is not on the same incline.

This is because many are investing in more tools that needed.

The more tools are in use, they can be fragmented. As a result, companies and enterprises may not really improve their existing security. Or worse, they may even worsen it due to them hindered by the complexity.

In short, investing in too many security tools can actually reduce the effectiveness of the overall defense.

In the research, it was said that while organizations are improving in cyberattack planning, detection, and response, their ability to contain an active threat has actually declined by 13%.

Cybersecurity
"While organizations surveyed have slowly improved in their ability to plan for, detect and respond to cyberattacks [...], their ability to contain an attack has declined."

While security response planning is slowly improving, the vast majority of organizations surveyed (74%) are still reporting that their plans are either ad-hoc, applied inconsistently, or that they have no plans at all. This lack of planning can impact the cost of security incidents, as companies that have incident response teams and extensively test their incident response plans spend an average of $1.2 million less on data breaches than those who have both of these cost-saving factors in place."

The key findings IBM found among the 3,400 security and IT professionals from around the world that it surveyed:

  • Slowly Improving: More surveyed organizations have adopted formal, enterprise-wide security response plans over the past years of the study.
  • Playbooks Needed: Even amongst those with a formal security response plan, not many organizations have developed specific playbooks for common attack types, and plans for emerging attack methods.
  • Complexity Hinders Response: The amount of security tools that an organization was using had a negative impact across multiple categories of the threat lifecycle amongst those surveyed.
  • Better Planning, Less Disruption: Companies with formal security response plans applied across the business were less likely to experience significant disruption as the result of a cyberattack.

On average, companies, organizations and enterprises deploy 45 cybersecurity-related tools on their networks.

Part of which may be the results from the many cybersecurity companies successfully marketing their security products.

Enterprises that deploy over 50 tools ranked themselves 8% lower in their ability to detect threats, and 7% lower in their defensive capabilities, than other companies employing fewer toolsets.

While too many is not good, too little is also problematic.

According to its research, IBM found that a lot of the respondents didn't really have plans to improve their cybersecurity, aside from having dedicated IT staff.

"Since different breeds of attack require unique response techniques, having pre-defined playbooks provides organizations with consistent and repeatable action plans for the most common attacks they are likely to face," the report notes.

The internet

Cybersecurity is just another word to describe "computer security".

It involves methods and tools to protect computers and the network they are connected to, from hackers that are willing to steal/damage/disrupt their data assets, hardware, or software. In general, it's all the practices used to protect against unauthorized access to data centers and other computerized systems.

The goal of implementing cybersecurity is to provide a good security for computers, servers, networks, mobile devices and the data stored on the devices from attackers with malicious intent.

Not only that companies, organizations, enterprises, as well as their employees, staff and individuals need to understand the tools, they are also required to have proper training and understand the risks associated with the ever-changing technology trends.

Cybersecurity threats can come from malware, ransomware, social engineering attacks, phishing and more.

Elements of cybersecurity involve: application security, information security, network security, disaster recovery/business continuity planning, operational security, and end-user education.

Cybersecurity is complex, and has become increasingly important due to the increased reliance of computer systems to the internet, Bluetooth, smart devices, USB ports for data transfer and more.

These are the reasons why cybersecurity is a continuously changing field, and has become one of the major challenges in the contemporary world.