recommendations
Here's how IT and security leaders can increase their capabilities and confidence in their ability to protect their data across cloud, SaaS, and on-premise environments.
#2
Inform your policies, processes, and procedures with data awareness and data prioritization.
Policies
Set appropriate policies. For instance, control the conditions under which sensitive files are downloaded.
For example, maybe it's a policy to restrict editing access to your organization's source code on a public WiFi network if you aren't using a VPN. These may seem like obvious ideas, but you'd be surprised how often people forget to employ them in a systemic way.
Processes and procedures
Define methods for enforcing policies. For instance, if users aren't allowed to download specific files under specific circumstances, then:
- How are you going to enforce that policy?
- How are you going to track when its violated?
- How are you going to deal with the fallout of that violation?
- Who is responsible for making sure that happens?
Companies must answer all these questions to ensure data safety and to give boards and leadership confidence that you know where all your sensitive data is and you have a plan for protecting it.
#3
Use automation to help your security and IT teams level the playing field.
There's no way anyone can expect security and IT teams to keep up with what's happening with the vast amount of data an organization generates without some significant help.
Even with monitoring and aggregation tools, the amount of alerts coming at often short-staffed teams is enough to make even the most talented and hardened IT and security professionals want to bury their heads in the sand.
The only way to effectively ensure that policies are enforced and processes and procedures are followed is through automation.
For example, when a security incident occurs, a root-cause analysis is necessary. Without automation, security analysts must manually sift through large volumes of data a tedious and time-consuming process. As we know, repetitive tasks increase the likelihood of human error. A common example is an analyst in the SOC mistakenly marking a true positive as a false positive, potentially leaving a threat unaddressed.
By automating routine and repetitive tasks, organizations not only reduce errors but also free up skilled professionals to focus on more strategic and high-value security efforts.
The results are alarming
~90%
of organizations surveyed have been attacked, with many facing repeated assaults
86%
of companies facing extortion demands report paying the ransom
3/4
confirm attackers were able to breach and harm their data
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Acknowledgements
Rubrik would like to extend our appreciation to all outside organizations providing their hard-earned data knowledge to this study.
As with all things Rubrik Zero Labs, it takes a village to pull off these studies. Wakefield Research provided external data to make this research as objective as possible. Shaped By found a way to take the data and bring it to life. Finally, many Rubrikans worked hard to provide capability, context, and guidance. We'd like to extend a specific appreciation to Amanda O'Callaghan, Linda Nguyen, Lynda Hall, Ben Long, Görkem Otman, Peter Chang, Ajay Kumar Gaddam, Dan Eldad, Gunakar Goswami, Prasath Mani, Ethan Hagan, Kevin Nguyen, Caleb Tolin, Heather Webb, Meghan Fintland, and Fareed Fityan.