Is NHI Security Investment Justifiable for Your Organization?

Is your organization making a concerted effort towards investing in Non-Human Identities (NHIs) security? Given the increasing sophistication of cyber threats, ensuring tight security controls over machine identities is becoming vital in every industry. This is particularly significant for businesses operating in the cloud, where NHIs and their respective secrets are at constant risk of exposure.

Understanding the Worth of NHI Security Investment

The investment in the secure management of NHIs can substantially strengthen an organization’s cybersecurity posture by closing security gaps and minimizing risk. However, a common question among leaders is usually, “Are the costs justified”?

To answer this, let us consider the dire consequences of neglecting this crucial aspect of cybersecurity. The 2020 Cost of Data Breach Report by IBM Security suggests that the average total cost of a data breach is around $3.86 million. In comparison, the cost of implementing robust NHIs and secrets management is significantly lower, emphasizing the sound investment strategy.

Facilitating Seamless Collaboration between Teams

An essential function of NHI security involves fostering a well-synchronized link between security and R&D teams. This coordination helps your organization maintain a secure cloud, which is critical in industries like financial services, healthcare, travel, DevOps, and SOC teams.

Analyzing NHI Security Benefits

Embarking on the path of comprehensive NHI management can yield several advantages for your organization. Here are a few:

Minimizing Security Risks

By identifying and mitigating potential security risks in NHIs, your IT security team can actively decrease the likelihood of security breaches and data leaks.

Strengthening Compliance

Robust management of NHIs ensures extensive policy enforcement and audit trails, aligning your security practices with regulatory requirements and global standards.

Boosting Efficiency

Automation of NHIs and secrets management liberates your IT security team from manual tasks, allowing their focus to shift towards strategic initiatives.

Promoting Greater Visibility and Control

Investing in this domain offers a centralized platform for access management, enhancing visibility and thus facilitating better governance.

Cost Efficiency

The automation of rotating secrets and decommissioning NHIs can lead to substantial reductions in operational costs.

Maximizing Value from NHI Security Investment

The direct and indirect benefits of NHI security investment demonstrate its value. A Gartner study predicts that worldwide cybersecurity spend will continue to grow, with a forecasted total spend of over $170.4 billion by 2022. Simultaneously, the report encourages companies to allocate resources efficiently and make wise security investments.

Future-Proof Your Organization with NHI Security

Investing in NHI security is not merely a cost; it is an investment into the future of your organization. Bolstering your cyber defense through robust management of machine identities ensures a secure cloud environment for your organization. For additional insights into the realm of NHI security and secrets rotation, dive into this intriguing read.

Thus, in light of current cybersecurity, the question of whether investing in NHI security is justified seems to answer itself. After all, can organizations afford not to invest in fortifying their defense mechanisms and reinforcing their cloud security? Perhaps, it is indeed crucial to perceive NHI security as a justified security investment rather than an unnecessary cost.

This brings us to the all-important question of calculability,

“Are there tangible metrics to measure the return on investment (ROI) on NHI security?”

For instance, can you place a definitive value on avoiding a security breach or maintaining compliance with data regulations? Well, while the potential cost savings and reduced risk can be hard to quantify, this does not negate the long-term financial and strategic benefits of effective NHI security management.

An important perspective comes from the Gartner study, stating that tackling the challenge of managing machine identities is crucial in preventing security breaches.

Managing the Complexity of NHIs

When it comes to NHIs, it’s important to emphasize their sheer complexity. Each NHI consists of a Secret – its unique identifier – and the permissions it has been given by a destination server. As such, the security and management of NHIs involve securing the identity or ‘machine’ and its access credentials or ‘passport,’ along with continual monitoring for abnormal behavior.

Keeping Up with NHIs Life-Cycles

The management of NHIs isn’t a one-time process. It requires a holistic approach that involves handling all stages of the NHIs lifecycle. This includes their discovery and classification, monitoring their usage, identifying potential vulnerabilities, and ongoing threat detection and remediation.

Diversity in Industries, Unity in Requirements

The need for NHI and Secrets Management is widely applicable across industries and functions, including financial services, healthcare, travel, DevOps, and SOC teams. The common denominator remains the same – the pressing need to shield machine identities and secrets in a digital environment that’s increasingly making a transition towards the Cloud, thereby attracting bad actors with malicious intent.

The Story that Data Tells Us

Data-driven insights gleaned from a ThreatPost survey reveal that over 50% of the respondents had experienced a breach related to machine identities in the last two years. In a Forrester report, it was declared that applications (where NHIs are commonly used) are a common avenue for external attacks, and that these incidents are on the rise.

Adapting to the New Normal

In essence, protecting NHIs is an important aspect of adapting to the digital ecosystem. Managing machine identities and secrets can help organizations navigate the intricate digital terrain with their integrity intact.

This highlights the importance of investing in NHIs – a checkpoint in the roadmap to ensuring a secure cloud. Not just this, but also mitigating any potential fallouts due to data leaks or breaches, and building a robust defense mechanism as part of a proactive strategy.

Embracing an NHI security approach ingrains knowledge, establishes practices, and builds technical competencies necessary to solidify and future-proof an organization’s infrastructure.

So, when pondering on the worthiness of NHI security investment, one might consider adopting a more comprehension approach. This entails considering not just the monetary aspect but also the strategic value, the mitigation of potential risks & costs, and the assurance of a more secure future.

The post Is Investing in NHI Security Justified? appeared first on Entro.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Entro authored by Alison Mack. Read the original post at: https://entro.security/is-investing-in-nhi-security-justified/