Increased visibility leads to increased cyber resilience

Cyber resilience is essential in the modern threat landscape. However, with many organizations operating in security silos, making visibility across the organization inadequate.

To ensure cyber resilience, organizations must consider all of the pieces as one whole. Here, Security magazine talks with David Kellerman, Field CTO at Cymulate, about the risks of silos and how security leaders can improve visibility. 

Security magazine: Tell us about your background and career.

Kellerman: I am the Field CTO at Cymulate, a cybersecurity company focused on threat exposure validation, with almost 15 years of experience in the cyber field. I started my career as an information security specialist for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) before building my expertise in managerial and advisor roles on a variety of security topics and providing guidance on mitigating and managing risks. 

I joined Cymulate in 2020 as a Technical Account Manager, working my way up through the company in various customer success positions before starting as Field CTO in February 2024. My focus has always been on ensuring that customers’ needs are being met and are adapting to the demands of the market.

Security magazine: What are security silos, and how do they contribute to poor organizational visibility?

Kellerman: Security operations (SecOps) teams face a difficult challenge in keeping up with the number of repetitive and varied tasks that come with overseeing an organization’s security posture. The changing cybersecurity landscape requires these teams to respond swiftly to evolving threats and emerging vulnerabilities, oftentimes leaving individuals and teams to work on their own to complete tasks. 

The disjointed nature of security teams can lead to business units often operating in isolation as they serve their distinct functions with limited visibility into the other areas of the security program. In turn, we see the creation of security silos that prevent the organization from seeing what an attacker sees to find and fix what matters most. 

Security magazine: What risks does poor visibility present an organization?

Kellerman:
Poor visibility into an organization creates a level of uncertainty, leaving gaps where cyber threats and hackers can thrive undetected, slipping through the seams of systems that do not work together for exploitation. Without clear visibility into the effectiveness of security controls, teams cannot take the steps necessary to manage and mitigate risks, which could leave them open to critical severe impacts. 

As scrutiny grows on security teams amid rising cybersecurity incidents and stakeholders demand more accountability, being blind to these gaps and exposures can be detrimental to the overall business. While it is not possible for most security teams to address the thousands of vulnerabilities reported each month, increasing visibility into the organization’s security efforts allows teams to work in unison and address the most pressing threats.

Security magazine: How can security leaders increase visibility and cyber resilience?

Kellerman:
Breaking down security silos requires security teams to take a step back and implement a comprehensive strategy, such as exposure validation, that can validate any and all threat exposures across silos. The discovery phase of the implementation process is the most critical for visibility, giving insight across all systems and applications for a 360-degree view. This can be achieved by validating the effectiveness of security controls and correlating the results to threat intelligence and business context. A comprehensive view of these results enables teams to make informed decisions on what must be fixed first and optimize their controls to prevent future threats. 

Implementing these changes will see security teams transition away from reactive efforts to data-driven proactive efforts, addressing risks before they are exploited and reducing the pressure and time it would take to remediate after the fallout. Implementing a comprehensive security strategy provides the insights and visibility critical to being cyber resilient. 

Security magazine: Anything else you’d like to add?

Kellerman:
While security controls are a critical part of many programs, they can also be the crux (if left untested and validated) that allows threat actors to slip through the seams. With boards putting more and more pressure on CISOs and security teams to ensure cyber resilience, now is the time for them to take back control.