The modern enterprise network is a complex, highly connected ecosystem of hardware, software, services, communication protocols, virtual resources, and people; who all work together to support business operations. IT networks are now the backbones of organizations everywhere, so cyberattacks aimed at breaking down network security are a huge threat for companies and stakeholders.

With the sharp increase in remote working worldwide, companies have endured a proliferation of cybersecurity risks — and, consequently, increased their spending to protect stakeholders. One factor that influences the level of corporate cybersecurity, and your effectiveness in mitigating cybersecurity threats, is the proper deployment of reactive and proactive cybersecurity measures.

Key risk indicators are important for every business. And while “KRIs” vary from one industry to the next — for example, what’s important for agribusiness is different from what’s important for pharmaceutical firms — no matter what the KRIs look like, they’re all instrumental for managing operational risk. Think of a key risk indicator as a pressure gauge measuring the amount of some risk your company has.

Enterprises have traditionally relied on perimeter network security to keep attackers out and protect their organizationally unique sensitive data and resources. This approach works on the principle “verify, always trust” wherein authenticated users inside the network are trusted by default and allowed unfettered access. With the shift to cloud-native architecture, perimeter-based defenses have become obsolete and leave systems inherently vulnerable to malicious actors.

The number of machine identities for which organizations are responsible has “exploded” in recent years, according to Security Boulevard. These machine identities include devices and workloads. But they also include application programming interfaces (APIs). Organizations use APIs to connect the data and functionality of their applications to those managed by third-party developers, business partners, and other entities, per IBM.

The U.S. Federal Government needs to improve its information security risk management policies to keep pace with the dynamic threats to Federal networks and supply chains.

Vulnerability management is becoming increasingly important to companies due to the rising threat of cyber security attacks and regulations like PCI DSS, HIPAA, NIST 800-731 and more. Vulnerability management is a comprehensive process implemented to continuously identify, evaluate, classify, remediate, and report on security vulnerabilities.