As the enterprise threat landscape continues to expand, the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) attackers use are increasing in their sophistication. Detecting and responding to cyberthreats is difficult and complex, and worse yet, when cybersecurity products bring friction into the equation, the challenge becomes even greater.
User friction is never a good thing. When users experience friction with an app, website, or online service, it either prevents them from completing a project or suppresses their ability to accomplish a task. User friction makes common workflows more difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating to complete. Unfortunately, many cybersecurity products inhibit a seamless user experience, which causes them to find ways of circumventing the solution. Not only does this lower the product’s adoption rate, but it also increases the organization’s security risk.
When any product makes the human experience easier, faster, and more productive, the result is greater adoption throughout the organization and a better business outcome overall. The elimination of friction is critical for any cybersecurity product to be fully successful. This is where a human-centric design approach that reduces operational friction becomes an advantage. As it relates to cybersecurity, a human-centered design models the way real people interact within data and asset workflows and processes. It enables users to readily deploy security products that are easily tailored to their specific requirements.
Greater cybersecurity adoption equals a stronger security posture
Cybersecurity solutions that put human-centric design at the forefront operate in ways that solve problems with the human perspective in mind, with workflows and behavioral methods that improve the overall process. Just as important, they respond in ways that produce the results needed to control the optimal security outcomes. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 50% of CISOs will adopt human-centric design practices into their cybersecurity programs to minimize operational friction and maximize control adoption.
Expanding attack surfaces and vectors need continuous exposure management
Digital asset protection requires the ability to discover, validate and respond to vulnerabilities before threat actors find and exploit them. Accomplishing this requires a cohesive risk reduction strategy and deployment model that is automated and runs on a regular and repeatable basis. Because attack surfaces are growing, a comprehensive proactive approach is needed to identify and address a broad array of vulnerabilities such as misconfigurations, software flaws, network changes, and hidden malware.
Threat Detection and Incident Response, or TDIR, is a cybersecurity process that identifies, assesses, and responds to threats. According to Gartner, by 2026, more than 60% of TDIR capabilities will leverage exposure management data to validate and prioritize detected threats. This is up from less than 5% today.
By implementing automated penetration testing, red teaming, and Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) security measures, organizations gain greater visibility and control to prevent breaches, minimize risks, and increase security resilience. These TDIR processes, when built with human-centric design practices, enable a strong cybersecurity posture that effectively identifies and manages external-facing assets, discovers and validates vulnerabilities within those assets, and provides the recommendations and processes to quickly respond and eliminate threats.
Ridge Security TDIR capabilities have a human-centric design approach
Ridge Security’s RidgeBot®, an automated pentest robot for risk-based vulnerability management, leverages human-centric design practices by acting like human attackers using the ethical hacking methods of red teams. RidgeBot relentlessly locates exploits across an enterprise network, documents its findings, verifies vulnerabilities, and continuously measures results and effectiveness. RidgeBots make penetration testing affordable and run at enterprise scale.
Organizations are empowered to conduct automated pentesting from an attacker’s point of view. Before an exposure is even put into production, Ridgebots find, assess, prioritize, and fix a broad array of exposures. The resulting validation allows organizations to see what would happen in the event of an attack, how their defenses would cope, and how well the processes would perform. This validation is achieved through breach and attack simulation and automated penetration testing.
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