Cybersecurity teams are overwhelmed. There’s a shortage of cybersecurity professionals with the necessary knowledge and expertise to adequately staff security operations centers (SOCs) around the world. This makes it exceedingly difficult for understaffed security teams to respond swiftly and resolve the thousands of alerts received each day. In fact, security analysts are drowning in security alerts, with far too many to investigate and resolve each day. This can quickly overwhelm a security team, increase security incident backlogs, and lead to alert fatigue. In fact, 41% of potentially beneficial alerts are overlooked due to limited SOC resources. If even one of those alerts represents a viable threat, and the security team doesn’t address it, it could result in a breach.
Furthermore, security operations work is rife with monotonous, repetitive, and time-consuming manual processes and tasks. Trying to handle all of these processes manually or without effective procedures can result in analysts spending an average of three hours or more on each individual investigation, often juggling six different tools while doing so. This is time that could otherwise be spent on activities like strategic planning, mission[1]critical decision-making, and innovation that can strengthen your security posture and drive high-value business outcomes. To make matters worse, many security teams are hindered by a lack of established security workflows. In the absence of these security standard operating procedures, analysts are unable to work together efficiently and effectively to resolve incidents rapidly. For other teams, their own security tools get in the way. SOCs are juggling a grab bag of security point-products that lack interoperability. These tools all possess static, independent controls, with no orchestration between them. It’s difficult to manage and reduces the speed of investigations. If your tools don’t work together, it can create gaps in your armor — gaps that attackers can exploit. Combined, all of these factors result in a slow mean time to triage, investigate, and respond to threats. All the while, threat actors can remain hidden in your network for up to nine weeks before being detected.