ACHI LEWIS at Absolute Software explores challenges of, and solutions to, maintaining device and application health amid growing complexity.

Over the last decade we have seen spending on cyber-security tools explode, with tens of billions being spent each year on new capabilities to shield organisations against the threat of cyber-criminals.

While the move towards more prevention and protection is a positive one, attackers continue to increase the sophistication of their attempts to extract information and finding new ways in.

Research shows that cyber-attacks increased by 77 per cent between 2021 and 2022 and the continuous examples that are presented to us provide a reminder that despite the fact organisations have security strategies in place, they are still at threat.

Often this can be down to the complexity of enterprise endpoint environments, the fragility of mission-critical security controls, and the overall health and resiliency of devices and applications.

Due to the constantly evolving landscape, investing in cyber-security as a one-off task is simply not enough. The continuous visibility and monitoring of application and device health is needed to strengthen protection, and even then, this is not a fool proof way to stop cyber-criminals.

Organisations must understand the increased threats that they are faced with and take the necessary measures to protect themselves and their users, devices, and sensitive data. We all know the effects can be detrimental, and businesses put themselves at risk of huge financial and reputational loss that will take more work to regain than implementing effective, resilient security measures.

The challenge of complexity

Enterprise organisations face continued struggles when managing their complex endpoint environments. We live in a work-from-anywhere world where working within an organisation’s four walls, five days a week, is no longer the norm. While it brings many positives, it also means enterprise devices are more dispersed than ever before.

Organisations now face challenges when it comes to controlling not only the devices, but the applications that are contained on the devices – and a rise in the number of applications being deployed has made the job of security teams increasingly difficult.

When organisations invest in cyber-security, often, this includes several various types of software in order to compile a complete and effective security posture. They are specially combined technologies designed to protect endpoints from potential threat, including Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).

Enterprise devices will generally have a number of different security controls installed onto a device, as well as a large number of business and productivity applications, including those deployed by an organisation, and those downloaded by the end user. Security teams are tasked with securing each and every one.

While the intention and purpose is for security software to be as thorough and resilient as possible, no application is immune to failure and their health can be affected by many factors, from tampering by a devious malicious actor to the simple fact they require updating.

Research from Absolute Software that monitored security application health found that apps were working effectively on less than 80 per cent of devices, and in some cases as low as 35 per cent.

While organisations may believe they are implementing security controls, if they then turn a blind eye to their ongoing health, they can quickly and easily deteriorate. The investment made to protect data will be at risk of going to waste and vulnerable endpoints will provide attackers an entry point to extract valuable data.

Endpoint fragility

The strength of an enterprise’s security posture is directly related to the health and resilience of devices and applications. And, with so much fragmentation, the average enterprise device is often months behind on applying the latest patches.

Research shows that in 2022, 20,265 new software vulnerabilities had been identified and reported, up from up from 20,171 in the entire year of 2021. While the increase may only seem slight, for these vulnerabilities to be secured, security teams must identify and provide updates to each and every endpoint owned by an organisation.

Not only is this time consuming but in a working world that lacks the necessary cyber-skills, the resources and skills to do so are not always available.

When looking at Windows 10 devices, new updates are available every month on Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday. Despite updates being available, often these get neglected due to the simple fact it can be seen as a big job for organisations to ensure every device is up to date, every month.

While organisations may find it easy to overlook this protocol, it opens them up to potential threats and reduces the effectiveness of their security posture. In fact, hackers have published codes online that allows them to exploit an organisation’s device if vulnerabilities have not been updated, essentially meaning cyber-criminals have an easy route in.

Self-healing technologies needed

While preventing cyber-attacks all together may not be a realistic goal, implementing measures that reduces the risk of an attack, as much as possible, should be the aim for all organisations. To do so, visibility, control and self-healing capabilities across endpoints should be prioritised.

This entails having an awareness around how many devices have out of date applications while also being aware of the potential risk this poses. However, even when an organisation is aware they often do not act. This is when self-healing solutions come in to play that can do the job for you.

Self-healing technologies can not only track endpoint and application health but can repair or reinstall them when needed, without the user or IT team having to manually do so themselves, ensuring devices and critical security controls are up to date, healthy and resilient.

Cyber-attacks pose great risk to organisations, the government, the education sector and many other domains and it is in the interest of everybody that security postures are implemented that not only continuously monitors a device, but automatically heal themselves to provide organisations the best chance of protecting themselves against cyber-criminals.

• Lewis is Area VP EMEA for Absolute Software.