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Cyber security is becoming increasingly important as digital transformations continue and companies embrace the cloud. The only way to try and combat an attack is to make sure you know what is happening in every corner of your network all the time – a feat that is certainly difficult. But if you don’t, you’re leaving your system vulnerable to adversaries.
Adversaries today are increasingly organized, adaptable, and perhaps most surprising of all, incredibly patient. But don’t let that lead you to think they will not be opportunistic as well. Any easy opportunity to take advantage of and infiltrate your system to steal information and data, ransom your data, or infect your system will be taken if presented. To secure your system as much as possible, you want to make sure every aspect of your network is protected – a Software Asset Management (SAM) program can help you do this.
Achieving a completely secure network is a constantly moving target—a practically unattainable and potentially overwhelming goal for your IT teams. Instead, approach your IT security with the goal of mitigating risk after risk after risk vs. taking the whole sum of all possible risks and attempting to banish it at once. You will not be able to protect your entire system all at once, but you can take steps toward cyber security and an important step in the process is finessing your SAM program. Beyond cost savings and license compliance risk avoidance, an effective SAM program can help protect organizations from certain types of exploits used in cyber attacks.
If you currently have a SAM program, you will want to get your SAM team together and make sure you are still up-to-date and compliant with all of your licenses. Managing your software assets can be a lot of work but if you aren’t on top of them, you leave yourself vulnerable to attack. For instance, if you’re not certain you are compliant, or worse, know you are not, adversaries have the opportunity to gain access to your system. They may send an email or place a call inquiring about your non-compliant software and if you don’t know, you may give them enough information for them to access your system.
An effective SAM program can help prevent and minimize cyber security risks. But how?
Here are three key ways a SAM program can help:
If you are using software that you know is non-compliant, you are incredibly vulnerable to adversaries. Especially if you received the download from an unknown source. The download could be infected and when you put it on your system and start linking other software and devices to it, you have allowed the infection to spread. This type of resource is called shadow IT. Shadow IT makes its way into an organization when employees circumnavigate established (or non-established) purchasing processes to obtain software. If you have shadow IT in your network, there is no saying just how much information you have allowed the adversary to access unknowingly.
An effective SAM program allows you to know what is in your environment and identify any potentially risky applications. Once you have identified them, you can eliminate them from your system and replace them with healthy programs. In addition, employees accessing company information with personal devices can also cause infect files and software through their own devices. Using discovery and inventory data will enable you to detect and disable ‘shadow IT’ and any unapproved programs in your network. Additionally, access controls ensure that only authorized or selected users can access certain software.
Software deployment should be reserved for only the software your organization needs with licenses only provided to those who use the software. SAM helps inventory where software is deployed and how many unnecessary deployments exist. Financially, this makes sense. You don’t want to pay for something you don’t need. Simply eliminating unused software can save millions of dollars in subscription and licensing fees.
In addition, cyber security risk multiplies substantially outdated or redundant software assets that are kept in your IT environment – it just gives you one more thing to manage, which is one more thing that could be missed.
When developing an effective SAM program, determining a policy for security software patches and updates is vital. Many companies wait days or months to make the appropriate updates and that can leave your system vulnerable until you complete the updates. This issue is even worse if you are more than one update behind and only complete one update. The update you do download might have had a security issue that the most recent update fixed. If you do not update to the most recent version, you can leave your network vulnerable to an attack.
These processes can go a long way in reducing cyber security risks. Having an effective SAM process allows you to take corrective action when you do find an issue as quickly as possible. Even in the unfortunate case that your organization suffers a cyber security attack, SAM can help examine usage data. This enables you to know when the malicious software was last used and who used it.
When vulnerabilities are detected, an automated SAM process allows you to quickly tie software and hardware (i.e. laptops, servers, networking equipment, etc.) to user accounts. This will ensure that no active vulnerabilities go unnoticed or unpatched. These are all actions that can be more effectively managed with the SAM Services by Connor. By partnering with Connor, you have the benefit of working with a partner that is an expert in SAM and prides itself on being able to produce the greatest ROI for your organization.
With the high frequency of cyber security attacks following the pandemic, now is the time to embrace a SAM program, or upgrade your SAM program, to minimize security risk. Schedule a time to meet with one of our SAM experts to learn more about how Connor can help you protect your network.
To learn more about our SAM services or to speak to an expert, please email us at softwareadvisoryservices@connor-consulting.com.
