Despite the fact that worldwide spending on IT security continues to rise, data breaches are now more likely than ever. As a result, it is now integral that organisations strive to secure data and applications.
The state of enterprise breaches
According to a Ponemon Institute global review, the likelihood of an organisation falling victim to a data breach has risen to 1 in 4. While there are thousands of security products on the market, enterprise data is not any safer.
In turn, this creates a huge challenge for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs). In effect, these executives must endeavour to secure data and applications in increasingly dynamic and distributed IT environments.
As more companies embrace agile models of application development, however, these organisations can often perceive security as an obstacle to progress. As a consequence, it becomes incredibly difficult to implement security at the speed of the business.
It's time to secure data and applications
As a paper from VMware observes, CISOs and their teams experience two significant challenges when attempting to secure data and applications. Indeed, undetected threats and false alarms alongside fast-paced dynamic environments both risk compromising security initiatives.
First of all, existing endpoint security solutions can trigger numerous false alarms. This results in Security Operations teams either wasting time investigating non-existent threats manually or missing threats entirely.
Secondly, existing security solutions fail to accommodate the speed at which modern application development and deployment occurs. In turn, this means that security cannot keep up when organisations launch and update new applications.
Virtualisation is key
In order to address these two obstacles, VMware has developed a data centre endpoint security tool. In effect, AppDefence embeds threat detection and response into the virtualisation layer on which applications and data reside.
Unlike existing security solutions that typically chase threats, AppDefence monitors applications against their intended state. By automatically responding when apps deviate from this state, the solution ultimately maximises the efficiency and effectiveness of Security Operations.
The solution's response capabilities also allow security administrators to focus on catching and eradicating threats from their environment. Rather than wading through noisy data and investigating false threats, security teams can subsequently streamline their entire review process.
Using contextual intelligence, AppDefence removes the guess work involved in determining which changes are legitimate and which are dangerous threats. Above all, the tool is a foundational security product with a wide-reaching impact on an organisation's security strategy.
Interested in ethical hacking? Check out our interview with Chloé Messdaghi, Security Researcher Advocate, Co-Founder of Women in Security and Founder of WomenHackerz
