Why You Need Vulnerability Management for Business-Critical Applications: Part 1
Reason #1: Digital Transformation
This blog is the first of a five-part series on the importance of protecting business-critical applications. For more information, check out our whitepaper, Five Reasons Why You Need Vulnerability Management for Business-Critical Applications.
Cloud Migration
Business-critical applications hold valuable business data such as patents, processes, financial data, customer and employee data, and other sensitive information. While traditionally kept on-premises with layers of security, the shift to the cloud has evaporated the perimeter. With increasing interconnectivity between on-premise and cloud environments—between internal and third-party systems—exposure and risk increase. Managing these externally-facing critical systems has become increasingly complex, with recent research from SAP and Onapsis showing new unprotected SAP applications provisioned in cloud environments are being discovered and compromised in less than three hours. Security teams are plagued with a lack of visibility and extensive, complex patching and maintenance.
Mobility
In the last two years, we’ve seen tremendous change in the way companies and their employees operate. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitization of businesses across the world on all fronts. Many companies stood up (what they thought would be) temporary solutions to meet the demands of a newly remote workforce. More than 75% of IT teams report that cybersecurity took a “backseat to business continuity during the pandemic”2. And with this massive shift to a remote workforce, personal and public networks have become the corporate network, leaving organizations all the more vulnerable and further challenging security teams.
Digitization of Interactions and Operations
The last two years have also accelerated the digitization of customer and supply-chain interactions and operations. To support this reality, many companies have adopted their crisis-related changes long term, with cloud migrations and SaaS adoption skyrocketing and a hyper focus on digital customer experiences. At the same time, the urgency of these changes did not allow for optimal security. 91% of IT reported feeling pressured into compromising security for business practices4.
Cloud and internet-exposed business-critical applications that help foster new processes and business opportunities increase the attack surface—and threat actors know it. Vulnerabilities in supply chains have been at the forefront of this summer’s news cycle, from oil and gas pipelines to meat packing plants. Although the various causes of these issues may differ, the impacts are the same—company downtime and lost revenue.
Business Initiatives
Digital transformation initiatives, such as migrating to SAP S/4HANA, bring powerful new functionality. But, they also inadvertently introduce risks. In addition to meticulous planning and implementation, such initiatives require comprehensive security and compliance strategies from the start. Given the scope and complexity of such initiatives, dedicated security partners that can provide vulnerability management, threat monitoring, security testing and compliance automation are advisable.
Physical and digital are increasingly connected, from assets to people to critical data. Protecting the business-critical applications at the core of your organization is an integral part of a robust security strategy. Learn more about why you need a vulnerability management solution to secure your business-critical applications.
There’s a better way to protect your business-critical applications. Onapsis Assess provides comprehensive vulnerability management for organizations’ most business-critical applications such as SAP and Oracle. Onapsis Assess provides deeper visibility, automated assessments, detailed solutions and descriptions of associated risk and business impact. Learn more about how Onapsis Assess can play an integral part of your vulnerability management program.
More Reasons Why
- Reason 2: The Shift to the Cloud
- Reason 3: The Increasing Risk from Bad Actors
- Reason 4: Existing Defense-in-Depth Security Deployments Do Not Protect Business-Critical Applications
- Reason 5: Even the Best Teams Are Challenged To Do More With Less
1IBM Security X-Force Cloud Threat Landscape Report
2HP Rebellions & Rejections Reports
3,5 McKinsey Digital and Strategy & Corporate Finance Practices How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point—and transformed business forever October 2020
4HP Rebellions & Rejections Reports