Cyber Asset Management

To keep your company's IT and OT assets secure at all times and avoid being compromised by threat actors, Cybersecurity Asset Management (CAM) offers the processes and policies that manage the life of your IT and OT assets from creation/procurement through disposal. An efficient program for managing cybersecurity assets makes sure that

• Assets are produced or acquired in a controlled manner, adhering to a predetermined procedure.

• Rapid detection of rogue assets results in their management for their safety.

• Throughout their operational life, all assets are secure.

• End−of−life equipment is safely decommissioned to prevent data leakage from the organization.

The CAM program's scope covers physical and virtual systems and cloud−based resources like S3 buckets and serverless databases. The word "assets," frequently used to mean a server or network device, can also refer to the datasets stored on those devices.

Does Cyber Asset Management Matter?

Many organizations place a high priority on cybersecurity initiatives, but some of them lack an essential step. Before effectively protecting your cybersecurity assets, you must have visibility into them.

Cybersecurity asset management determines, assesses, and prioritizes your most crucial assets. It aids your comprehension of assets that are crucial to the cybersecurity efforts of your company and the level of risk they each pose. You can benefit from a strong cybersecurity asset management program by

• Prioritize your cybersecurity budget by concentrating on the areas that need the most investment based on the findings of risk assessments.

• You can close crucial cybersecurity gaps by allocating resources to protect the most valuable systems or processes.

• Proactively manage your cybersecurity so that you can identify potential issues and stop them in their tracks.

Simply put, one area of cybersecurity asset management that your company can take charge of is cyberattack defense. It contributes to the robustness of your cybersecurity strategy.

Key Features

360-degree inventory of the full IT ecosystem

• Gain awareness of the entire internal and external attack surface and gain actionable intelligence, visibility, and insight into it.

• For complete visibility of remotely exploitable vulnerabilities, including previously unknown devices via attribution, the system finds domains, subdomains, and certificates within the company, subsidiaries, and business partners.

• Expose "shadow IT" and baseline anomalies, such as VMs, containers, functions−as−aservice, and IoT, which start up faster than IT can keep track of with existing tools.

Detect and monitor security gaps

• Tag assets for easy grouping

• Enable risk management

• Execute like an attacker

Plan an automated alert, report, and response system.

• Reporting and taking action in response to known security risks

• Auto-document compliance for policies such as PCI DSS, FedRAMP, NIST, and ISO

• To go beyond External Attack Surface Management, use the integrated Qualys Cloud Platform.

Connect to ServiceNow

• Synchronize consistently with ServiceNow

• Add context for asset visibility focused on security

• Asset inventories should include security and business context.

Who Should Participate in Cybersecurity Asset Management Process

You should consult with several important participants if you're in a position to make decisions about the cybersecurity asset management process. These consist of the following

• Chief information security officer (CISO)

• Information technology (IT) staff

• Risk management team or department

• Security operations

• Compliance officers

How Do You Set Cybersecurity Asset SSET Priorities and take action?

Prioritizing your assets comes next after you've identified them. One of the most popular methods for businesses to effectively prioritize their cybersecurity assets according to risk is as follows

Fill Out a Risk Matrix

You can take the data you collect and turn it into action by creating a risk matrix. A matrix of this kind has the formula cybersecurity risk = likelihood x severity. Your risk matrix's x−axis should show the risk's likelihood, and the y−axis should show the impact. Your top priorities for addressing the risks are those with the highest probability and most significant impact.

Analyze The Impact and Likelihood

Make a list of all the dangers your cybersecurity assets could face. Your scale might have a minor impact or a significant impact. After that, consider how likely the asset will have a problem. You will now have all the knowledge necessary to create a risk matrix.

Address Cybersecurity Asset Issues

Every organization's cybersecurity assessment management and top priorities will differ, but most will share a few issues. For instance, you might need to develop a strategy to manage risk exposures or an incident response plan for particular types of attacks that your industry is vulnerable to.

The most vital thing to remember is that natural cybersecurity asset management goes beyond knowing your adversaries. Although knowledge is power, what do you decide to do with it? That matters.

Risks of Poor Asset Management

Cybersecurity threats are already a significant problem for businesses and greatly affect revenue. The average data breach cost increased by almost 10% between 2020 and 2021, reaching over $4 million. According to IBM's report on Cost of a Data Breach 2021, that represents the fastest growth rate in almost a decade.

Anyone could discover and take advantage of your organization's asset management weaknesses. This raises the possibility of additional malicious cyberattacks, data loss, and business interruption. However, many of these consequences can be avoided if the appropriate individuals and procedures are in place.

Conclusion

IT assets are at the heart of cybersecurity. Networks, hardware, and software are the points of entry for cyber attackers when companies are hacked; this is how it happens. Because responsibility is frequently divided among various departments and, to be honest, because it isn't seen as particularly exciting, IT asset management is frequently underfunded and undermanaged within organizations. However, few things can make a system more vulnerable to a cyber−attack than a program for managing IT assets that is haphazard at best.