Good cyber governance is not a “nice to have” or an “IT problem” – it is a must have in order to protect the business from threat actors and attacks targeting them. This is even more true today, as we are seeing an expanded attack surface through distributed networks and as more organizations embrace digital transformation.

Without a doubt, IT environments are becoming more complex, as security leaders are challenged with having unique environments, multiple teams and constant changes – and all this means that their security programs must evolve continuously.

In the process, security leaders may, unfortunately, assume that they are protected when, in fact, they are not…and worse yet, they may have been breached but don’t know it.

In our report, Mandiant Security Effectiveness Report 2020, we delved into security controls effectiveness across the multiple stages of attack life cycles within 11 global industries. And what we discovered was that all too often, security controls are not performing as expected. In a nutshell, we have a perception versus reality problem, meaning that most companies are incorrectly assuming that they are alerting, preventing and blocking attacks – but in reality, they are not.

For instance, did you know that:

• Alerts are only generated for 9% of attacks
• Only 26% of attacks are detected
• Only 33% of attacks are prevented
• Over half (53%) of attacks are missed

Clearly, there is a disconnect between security team assumptions, expectations and reality as many organizations are performing far below their predicted levels of effectiveness. Why? Because SIEMs and other technologies responsible for triggering alerts are not able to deliver a high level of fidelity to both prioritize and address security concerns.

Now more than ever, security teams need a way to continuously measure and monitor controls to capture quantitative evidence of security gaps. They need to demonstrate with evidence the ability to reduce risk and improve an organization’s overall security posture.

Solutions like Mandiant Security Instrumentation Platform (SIP) help organizations get there by minimizing risk and strengthening cyber hygiene with data-driven evidence that shows real-time security performance. Through automated, continuous monitoring and measurement against real-world attack behaviors, SIP enables organizations to gain the “right” insights to validate that security controls are working as they should.

Interested in learning how you can validate your controls against current and actual attacks? Visit here to download a full copy of the Mandiant Security Effectiveness Report 2020, including a list of the 10 fundamentals for successful cyber security effectiveness validation.

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