A shortage of knowledgeable security pros and a greater variety of information technology have set companies back in their fight to secure their infrastructure, according to an annual study by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Companies have lost ground in the fight to secure their infrastructure, as the managers of security operations centers (SOCs) have to deal with a greater variety of information technology and a shortage in knowledgeable security workers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise stated in a report.
The State of Security Operations 2016 report found that the average maturity rating of SOCs fell over the past year, with 25 percent of companies failing to even score a level 1 on the 6-point scale of maturity. A lack of knowledgeable security professionals, a greater variety of information technology and budget pressures all contributed to the decline, Kerry Matre, senior product marketing manager of services for HPE Security, said. “When we talk to CISOs [chief information security officers] and do surveys, the lack of skilled resources is the No. 1 issue they are facing,” she said. “The organizations that are doing well are finding a workaround for this issue.”
With businesses concerned over regular reports of breaches, an increasing number are creating a central group to handle security, Matre said. From two- or three-person groups to large centers with dozens of employees, security operations centers allow companies to focus on creating the infrastructure and processes needed to lock down their networks and data.
The lack of security expertise has forced businesses to adopt a hybrid staffing model, using managed-security services to handle the triaging of incidents and initial monitoring and using in-house security teams for incident response. Organizations are also looking to automation to help ease incident response, so as to free up security resources to conduct hunting and breach investigations. The companies that succeed in advancing the maturity of their security operations centers are those that focus on establishing processes and training workers year after year, said HPE’s Matre.
