With economic storm clouds gathering and the ongoing outlook for 2023 becoming increasingly uncertain, many businesses are going through their spending budgets with a fine tooth comb. They realise that making cuts now could help them weather what might lie ahead.
Thankfully, budget pruning appears not to be having an impact when it comes to cybersecurity. Senior managers understand the threats their organisations continue to face and realise that reducing spend could significantly increase their level of risk.
If anything, IT security budgets appear to be set to increase. According to estimates from Gartner, security and risk-management budgets are tipped to rise 11% globally during the coming year.
However, this additional spending will not be made without significant oversight. Senior managers want to be confident it is delivering value for money and actively reducing real business risks.
How NDR can boost security budget returns
During the past few years, many IT security managers have come to understand the benefits of making a budget allocation for network detection and response (NDR) solutions. They understand that NDR can close visibility gaps that other security solutions, such as endpoint detection and response (EDR) and SIEM, don’t address.
NDR tools can help an organisation detect suspicious behaviour on its network that could signal an early-stage attack. As a result, IT security managers are discovering that the benefits of NDR extend beyond high-fidelity network monitoring and can actually have a direct impact on the business bottom line.
NDR allows legacy tools to be retired
In addition to providing a business with enhanced visibility of potential security threats, NDR can also deliver an opportunity to retire older tools with limited use cases. This, in turn, helps to minimise technology complexity and optimise spending.
For example, behaviour and rules-based threat detection delivered by NDR can serve as an upgrade for the legacy IDS systems that many organisations have long relied on for compliance. At the same time, the network visibility and device inventory capabilities of NDR can replace older, specialty network device inventory tools, scanners, and network testing devices.
Increased ROI
While NDR can’t replace all existing security tools, such as endpoint and log-based systems, it can extend visibility and enhance the functions of these other solutions. Integrated data feeds and workflows from NDR, EDR, and SIEM help make existing tools more effective at their core function.
Security teams can also work to integrate NDR platforms with EDR, SIEM, and SOAR tools to extend visibility and increase automation. Integrated NDR can also extend the quarantine and response capabilities of an EDR solution into unmanaged IoT devices, while also enhancing SOAR playbook accuracy by adding high-quality data feeds from hard-to-detect areas such as encrypted protocols.
Better detection in the cloud
With business adoption of cloud platforms and resources continuing to increase, security teams have tended to adopt specialty cloud security tools and services as part of their overall security strategy. SaaS-based NDR works well as a complement to these existing tools.
Typically, NDR coverage tends to include connected devices, cloud workloads, and services. This enables threat detection for all aspects of cloud and on-premises workloads in a single solution.
These detection capabilities can aid both cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP), which monitor and detect threats in container and virtual machine workloads, and cloud access security brokers (CASB) which offer visibility between cloud applications and end users.
Overcoming staff churn
NDR can also assist businesses when it comes to tackling the challenge of staff churn. With top-quality IT security personnel difficult to find, retaining those already on board has never been more important.
Staff churn often occurs because team members feel overworked. This can also lead to situations where significant security threats are missed. By adopting toolsets such as NDR that reduce complexity, security leaders can reduce pressure on IT security teams and help them work more efficiently and effectively.
Avoiding the cost of security breaches
Perhaps the most important benefit of including NDR in an organisation’s security budget is that it delivers the ability to detect more threats. This, in turn, can result in a business avoiding the often-significant costs associated with a successful attack.
In essence, NDR prevents more attacks by extending visibility into all aspects of an organisation’s network. This gives security teams the insight they need to spot malicious activity and stop it before damage or disruption can occur.
Consider making an allowance for NDR in your IT security budget. It could pay handsome dividends in the future.
