Full-Stack Application and Data Security with Business Risk Observability

In today’s digital landscape, businesses across various sectors are increasingly aware of their vulnerability to security threats. Recent research by Cisco AppDynamics indicates that 89% of technology professionals believe their organizations have seen a significant increase in their attack surfaces over the past two years, with 46% acknowledging that this has led to heightened challenges in security management.

The operational teams responsible for protecting users, customers, and technological infrastructures are confronted with an unprecedented threat landscape. Modern applications operate within a complex mix of on-premises, hybrid, and cloud-native environments, complicating their integration, observation, and security.

This complexity creates an expansive attack surface for cybercriminals, resulting in a growing array of external threats that organizations must defend against.

The rapid proliferation of digital applications has generated a vast amount of telemetry data, making traditional security monitoring and observability methods increasingly ineffective. The sheer volume of data to analyze, combined with the multitude of potential threats, leads to an overwhelming number of alerts for operational teams. This alert overload makes it challenging to differentiate between urgent notifications and those that genuinely require attention.

As a result, teams often find themselves inundated with noise from excessive alerts. They struggle to gather and correlate data across various systems to pinpoint the source of threats or issues. This lack of comprehensive visibility into interdependencies hampers their ability to conduct effective root cause analyses.

Moreover, alerts frequently lack the necessary context for teams to understand how specific issues affect user experiences or business operations. For instance, an alert may be categorized as high priority due to its potential for exploitation; however, its significance is only relevant if such exploitation poses a risk to the business. Conversely, downplaying a hard-to-exploit vulnerability can lead to severe consequences if it results in the exposure of sensitive personal or critical business information.

When teams fail to accurately connect technology and security challenges to business implications, they may inadvertently prioritize issues that pose substantial risks to their reputation and revenue lower than they should.

The Cisco AppDynamics report highlights that IT professionals recognize this challenge. An impressive 93% emphasize the importance of contextualizing security risks in relation to applications and understanding how to prioritize vulnerability remediation based on potential downstream business impacts.

Business Risk Observability: Integrating Business Context into Security Vulnerabilities

Cisco Full-Stack Observability represents a shift from traditional perimeter-based security measures toward a proactive approach that secures applications based on business risk.

Business risk observability is an innovative capability within Cisco Full-Stack Observability that empowers teams to prioritize security concerns according to their potential impact on business operations. This approach integrates threat context from various leading Cisco security solutions with application-specific insights. It provides a ranked, transaction-based business risk score for each identified threat by combining threat modeling and risk analysis with inputs related to business transactions. Additionally, it considers the number of vulnerability instances, their potential severity, and the assets at risk.

With this framework in place, teams can assess the likelihood of exploitation while gaining visibility into the location and impact of threats. This enables faster response times through real-time remediation guidance, including actionable steps to prioritize and address the most critical vulnerabilities.

Data Security Posture Management Observability: Protecting Sensitive Data

As businesses continue their digital transformation and utilize an increasing number of applications, the volume of data has surged dramatically. Consequently, securing this data is more crucial than ever. Data Security Posture Management equips teams with the tools needed to identify, classify, prioritize, and mitigate data risks and vulnerabilities while ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

Secure What Matters

Ultimately, Cisco Full-Stack Observability offers robust and adaptable solutions for securing applications and data. This enables each team within an organization to maintain its core competencies while collectively working towards reducing risk and exposure. As a result, organizations can leverage their IT architecture effectively in alignment with their fundamental business objectives.

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