Are your IT environment and security posture like a kilonova, or more like two black holes?

According to Wikipedia, a kilonova happens with a neutron star, the collapsed core of a star, encounters and merges with a black hole or another neutron star. Each neutron star is so dense, “a teaspoon of their matter would weigh 1 billion tons,” as Time.com reported. Such a collision throws off intense gamma rays, a gravitational wave (as first theorized by Albert Einstein), and debris that coalesces into heavy elements such as gold, platinum, and uranium.

We now know that a kilonova actually took place approximately 130 million years ago and 130 million light-years away. Each light-year is approximately 5.88 trillion miles of distance. Which is why the event was only seen by thousands of astronomers and scientists on Earth this past August, as several of them revealed last week. (Fret not. They weren’t keeping the news from us. It takes a bit of time to analyze, then summarize and simplify for public consumption such a…cosmic event.) 

OK, Interesting Enough – But What’s the IT/Cybersecurity Connection? 

I’m glad I asked… 

If your enterprise is like many we encounter at Ivanti, there are a few things likely bedeviling your efforts to deliver IT services and resources that are consistently available and secure. Here are some of the challenges cited by our customers, as discussed in our white paper, What to Do BEFORE All Hell Breaks Loose: Cybersecurity for Today’s Extreme Threats. 

  • Your endpoints are bullseyes. Your servers and your users’ client devices, whether company- or personally owned, are high-value targets for hackers and purveyors of malware. In its 2016 Global Business Technographics Security Survey, Forrester found 48 percent of external attacks targeted corporate servers, 42 percent targeted corporate-owned devices, and 42 percent targeted employee-owned devices. 
  • Your users are targets, too. In 2016, the highly respected Verizon Data Breach Intelligence Report (DBIR) found that 30 percent of phishing emails were opened by their recipients, compared with 23 percent the previous year. Worse, 12 percent of those who opened those emails clicked on the malicious attachments or linked they contained. No surprise, then, that in 2017, the Verizon Research, Investigations, Solutions and Knowledge (RISK) team found phishing used in more than 90 percent of security incidents and breaches. 
  • Your patching is broken. Software is inherently vulnerable. The older your software gets, the more vulnerabilities are exposed. Legacy software never gets patched, and newer software isn’t patched properly. Also, you can’t patch everything, and patching can’t protect everything. 
  • Too many tools, not enough solutions. Among security professionals surveyed for the Cisco 2017 Annual Cybersecurity Report, 55 percent use at least six security vendors. This means you and your team are juggling multiple tools and platforms, while dealing with an industry-wide shortage of skilled, experience people. Little wonder that the same report found that nearly half of all alerts generated by those disparate tools go uninvestigated. Each one of those uninvestigated alerts represents a potentially significant security gap. 

What your environment needs is its own IT/cybersecurity kilonova – not a collision, but a coming together. Modernizing, coalescing, and consolidating your disparate IT and cybersecurity tools and processes can throw off business benefits as valuable as the heavy elements created when neutron stars meet – and with none of those pesky, destructive gamma rays.  

Light Up Your IT Security Strategy with Ivanti 

A focused, multi-layered, consolidated security strategy, supported by modern tools and automation, can close your security gaps, shrink your attack surface, detect and respond to malicious activity effectively, and balance security requirements with user needs. And Ivanti has the solutions, expertise, and experience to help you develop and implement such a strategy. 

Grab your complimentary copy of our white paper, to learn more about how to get started on the road to better cybersecurity and The Power of Unified IT™. Check out our solutions for network discovery and inventory, client and server patch management, combating malware, and control of users’ applications, devices, and privileges. Then, contact Ivanti, and let’s start bringing your IT and cybersecurity management efforts closer together.