So you can fully protect your tech stack

In an unstable geopolitical environment, companies are adopting digital transformation initiatives to maintain and increase productivity.

IT managers are under increasing pressure to get a complete overview of their infrastructure. This is the only way to minimize the risk of disruptions that may affect customer, shareholder and employee data. Without a clear vision of where your tech stack is today, these goals will remain out of reach for you.

Start from scratch

Asset management is the foundation of any company’s information security. It’s about having a complete, accurate, and always up-to-date list of all the assets in an organization’s IT environment. This sounds easy at first – but why is asset management so difficult in practice?

When security and IT teams have a comprehensive understanding of your organization’s IT assets, they can take the necessary steps to mitigate security threats. Misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and outdated hardware can be detected more quickly. In addition, asset management allows employees to prioritize, allowing more time to focus on the issues most important to the business.

Look inside…

A comprehensive asset inventory is the foundation that should exist in every business. However, research has shown that 69 percent of organizations experienced an attack that targeted an “unknown, unmanaged or poorly managed asset with an internet connection.” As long as companies do not know what assets are in their corporate network, they cannot protect them either.
If your team can’t provide you with this information, you have no way of knowing the extent of control over the associated vulnerabilities. Building an overview of your company’s assets will undoubtedly unearth some of the mysteries—the shadow applications of IT, for example—that have arisen over the years.

Once you have your asset catalog in place, you need to think about how you can keep it up to date. For example, classifying assets based on their commercial importance ensures that each asset receives the appropriate amount of attention. For example, attackers always start with the terminal devices in the corporate environment when exploiting vulnerabilities. If these devices are running outdated software, they are easy targets for attackers.

Control end-of-service components

Software and hardware age over time. Once you have an accurate view of your IT ownership, you can compare it to the component lifecycle to ensure all hardware and software are still manufacturer-supported and proactively managed for patches. There are also tools that can map information about the life cycles of shared assets so that they are centrally available.

Normalization, classification and prioritization

In many organizations, there may be tens of thousands of assets that need to be identified and managed. Security tools help accomplish this task and can automate processes so that routine tasks can be completed without manual intervention. By integrating asset inventory with end-of-life and end-of-service information, you can see all the information in one place.

Comprehensive overview: Qualys and Datastore make this possible

If you ask yourself: “What does my company look like from a hacker’s point of view?” You get a comprehensive overview of your entire IT inventory. It does this by examining all devices connected to the Internet to determine how to exploit existing vulnerabilities.

Attack Surface Management relies on a robust approach to asset management and takes it a step further by assessing the security level of all discovered assets. Just like asset management, it must be done on an ongoing basis, with constant discovery, classification, and evaluation.

Datastore AG

Pathackerstrasse 6
8957 Spreitenbach
Tel. 056419 71 71

[email protected]
www.datastore.ch