The big task for CIOs in 2020: Bringing security and IT operations together

The first step in bridging the gap starts with understanding the problem.  IT and security operations have worked in silos for decades so one might think “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  But it is, in fact, broken, and there is little awareness of the impact caused by the fragmentation.

According to a recent study conducted by Forrester on behalf of endpoint security company Tanium, 67% of IT leaders surveyed admitted that driving collaboration between the two groups is a challenge and that the rift widens an already big gap in visibility and makes resolving issues harder.

In organizations that lack collaboration between security and IT, it takes nearly two weeks longer to patch IT vulnerabilities than teams with a healthy relationship, the study found.  This delay can put companies at significant risk of being breached, causing brand damage or even crippling an organization.

Companies don’t know what they don’t know

Fifty-one percent of IT leaders surveyed by Forrester say they feel they have full visibility into the vulnerabilities and risks in their environment, and 49% say they have full visibility into all the software and hardware assets connected to their IT environment.  From conversations I have had with some senior IT people, I would peg the number at less than 20% that have full visibility into vulnerabilities.

Every company I have ever talked to that thinks they know what’s connected has no idea.  My estimate is that less than 10% of companies actually know everything that is connected to their IT environment.  Unless you’re an organization with a completely locked down IT environment, it’s simply too hard to know.  In the words of Spock, “Insufficient facts always invite danger.”

The problem is only going to get worse.  The rise in IoT and edge computing means more devices in more places, many of which IT will have no idea are being connected.  Exacerbating the problem is that many IoT devices are running older operating systems (hello, Windows 95) with default usernames and passwords and likely haven’t been patched for years. 

How CIOs can bring the teams together

One of the issues for most organizations is that the security and IT teams seem to have little desire to collaborate.  If this is going to happen, it must be driven by the CIO and pushed down across the organization. 

One tactic many CIOs have used to achieve this sort of change is to shift to business outcome-based goals, where the entire IT organization is measured on the success of an initiative. For example, if a retailer rolls out a mobile application and it works and has a high level of customer satisfaction, everyone gets a bonus. 

Along with a structural reorganization, a common set of tools is needed for both security and IT operations. Having a single source of truth will better align the two teams and provide a complete view of the environment, shining a light on blind spots and closing any visibility gaps with real-time data.  This will ultimately let teams make informed decisions to act and react quickly to disruptive incidents.

Two tools that bring IT and security together

The concept of bringing IT operations and security together isn’t new, although there has never been a great set of tools to support this. However, the rise of artificial intelligence and the cloud has enabled vendors to quickly process more data and make it useful to both IT and security teams.

One such tool is Tanium, an endpoint management platform that gathers data from computers, servers, and other connected devices and provides a single source of truth via a common data set and single pane of glass.

ServiceNow is another excellent tool to bring IT and security operations together. It provides a dashboard that encompasses all aspects of technical management, including IT service management, IT asset management, security operations and compliance reporting.  ServiceNow pulls in data from several different sources, including the previously mentioned Tanium.