Know Your Vulnerabilities: A SANS Continuous Monitoring Survey

BETHESDA, Md., Oct. 19, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The majority of IT professionals believe their continuous monitoring programs are mature or maturing (by maturing, we mean they are improving their continuous monitoring programs).  Yet how often and how comprehensively they scan—and follow through with remediation—reveals a different picture, according to results of a new survey to be released by SANS Institute on October 28, 2015.

The results of the survey seem positive at first glance: 62% of respondents consider their asset identification and classification capabilities to be "mature" or "maturing" (meaning they are improving). But only 19% perform scans weekly, and 19% scan more frequently, resulting in only 38% of respondents meeting the current recommendations included in the CIS Critical Security Controls.

"Organizations institute scanning programs for a variety of reasons, including to comply with various regulations, reduce risk by reducing the attack surface, improve their abilities to identify assets and enhance visibility into their systems, to name a few," says David Hoelzer, SANS instructor and author of the survey. "But those results only arise from continuous monitoring programs that include all of an organization's assets."

Only 88% of public-facing systems and 64% of public-facing web apps are included in respondents' assessment and remediation programs.

Hoelzer continues, "In addition to not scanning the right assets frequently enough, organizations face the challenges of lack of trained staff, budgets and management support."

Results show that continuous monitoring does improve risk posture. Those who could measure improvements from their continuous monitoring programs point to improvements in their overall risk posture as a result of their continuous monitoring programs. Top improvements include increased visibility into enterprise systems and infrastructure, improved ability to accurately detect and remediate malicious events, and reduced attack surface enabling fewer incidents or breaches.

Full results will be shared during a Wednesday, October 28, 2015 webcast at 1 PM EDT, sponsored by AlienVault, Arbor Networks, HP, and Tenable Network Security, and hosted by SANS. Register to attend the webcast at www.sans.org/u/9cm

Those who register for the webcast will also receive access to the published results paper developed by SANS instructor and vulnerability expert, David Hoelzer.

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About SANS Institute

The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. SANS is the most trusted and, by far, the largest provider of cyber security training and certification to professionals at governments and commercial institutions world-wide. Renowned SANS instructors teach over 50 different courses at more than 200 live cyber security training events as well as online. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, validates employee qualifications via 27 hands-on, technical certifications in information security. The SANS Technology Institute, a regionally accredited independent subsidiary, offers master's degrees in cyber security. SANS offers a myriad of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet's early warning system--the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners, representing varied global organizations from corporations to universities, working together to help the entire information security community. (www.SANS.org)

SOURCE SANS Institute

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