Unified Security Management (USM) Services: Streamlining Cyber Defense

Streamlining Cyber Defense

With digital banking channels exploding, financial institutions face mounting pressures safeguarding sensitive customer data against sophisticated cyber threats. But disjointed security tools and limited staff create visibility gaps that threats exploit.

According to recent SANS research, 67% of banking security leaders report using ten or more different products, each with separate consoles and reporting. Meanwhile, 70% need to be more staffed. The resulting complexity could be more manageable.

It drives the growing adoption of unified security management (USM) platforms that consolidate controls into a single pane of glass. Integrating capabilities like threat monitoring, vulnerability management, access control, and data security provides banks with operational efficiency and risk reduction.

The Threat and Compliance Imperative

"In 2021, hackers breached payments processor ACI Worldwide, gaining access to hundreds of banks and lenders globally through exploited system vulnerabilities."
"Illuminate, a banking industry data provider, exposed compassionate financial information on over 100 million consumers in 2022 due to an unsecured cloud storage bucket."

"CapQuest, a consumer credit reporting agency, saw a 2021 breach impacting 200+ banks through phishing-enabled ransomware. Customer SSNs and account details were compromised."

"Such incidents have resulted in over $2 billion in fines levied against banks for security and compliance failures just in the last two years, according to ForgeRock. Financial institutions can't afford security gaps, yet disjointed tools obstruct visibility."

Integrated platforms are pivotal for complying with regulations like GLBA, FFIEC, and NYDFS Cybersecurity Requirements mandating controls for data protection, access management, vulnerability assessment, and breach notification.

The Challenges of Fragmented Security

Most bank security operations contend with dozens of disconnected tools from assorted vendors, each with proprietary consoles, data stores, and licensing:

• Endpoint agents for malware prevention, detection and response
• Network security tools like next-gen firewalls, proxies, DDoS mitigation.
• Cloud access security brokers (CASBs) and data loss prevention for the cloud
• Identity and access management (IAM) solutions
• SIEMs and analytics platforms for monitoring and detection
• Vulnerability scanning and patch management systems
• Secure email gateways, web filters, and messaging security
• Deception tech, sandboxing, and threat intel feeds
  

This disparate security sprawl strains lean bank security teams with limited staffing. Analysts need help to stitch together insights from fragmented telemetry across these products. Critical threats get missed in the noise.

Excessive manual work is required for compliance reporting when pulling data from disconnected systems. Costs and inefficiencies compound as integration and maintenance burdens multiply.

Disjointed visibility also delays detection and response to attacks that quickly move laterally across endpoints, networks and clouds. Valuable time is lost pivoting between different consoles and interfaces.
Fragmentation poses many drawbacks:

• Limited visibility into advanced attacks crossing product boundaries.
• Increased compliance audit costs due to manual reporting.
• Delayed threat response from toggling between many interfaces.
• Unnecessary licensing and maintenance costs across duplicative products.
• Overwhelmed and overworked analysts lead to burnout.
• Data, context, and workflow siloes inhibiting collaboration.
  

For banks, fragmented security severely obstructs defending against sophisticated threats. Converging onto unified platforms solves many of these challenges.

Realizing the Potential of Unified Security

Unified security management (USM) converges key capabilities onto a single integrated platform with shared data, workflows, and analytics. Core benefits include:

USM provides consolidated visibility and control across hybrid environments – endpoints, networks, clouds, identities, apps, and data - from a single pane of glass. Analysts gain complete contextual insights.
Integrated telemetry and analytics connect insights across traditionally siloed sources like endpoints, networks, identities and clouds to uncover stealthy attacks migrating across vectors.
USM automatically generates reports satisfying PCI, GLBA, FFIEC, and other bank compliance mandates through integrated controls and data feeds, reducing manual overhead.
Analysts minimize context switching between dozens of consoles: shared workflows and data aid collaboration. Productivity jumps 41% on average, according to EMA research.
Converging disparate point tools slashes licensing, maintenance, and integration expenses. EMA finds that USM lowers costs by 53% on average.
Unified visibility into threats, vulnerabilities, and events enables early risk detection and containment. Integrated controls strengthen defences across identities, networks, clouds, data, apps, and devices. 

Standard USM capabilities include:

• SIEM and log management
• Endpoint detection and response
• Next-gen firewalls and network security
• Cloud security posture management
• Identity and access management
• Vulnerability scanning
• Email security
• Third-party risk monitoring
• Security analytics and threat intelligence
  

For resource-constrained bank security teams, unified security management delivers higher effectiveness and efficiency in advancing cyber defences.

Banks gain integrated visibility and control from one console across hybrid environments and security pillars. Analysts can quickly pivot between correlated telemetry from endpoints, networks, users, apps and clouds to uncover stealthy attacks. Compliance reports satisfying PCI, GLBA and FFIEC are readily produced with automated data feeds.

According to Enterprise Management Associates, unified security drives a 53% average reduction in security tool costs and a 41% improvement in analyst productivity by consolidating over two dozen disparate products. Breach risk reduces significantly.

Choosing the Right USM Provider

Since unified security management (USM) underpins critical banking protections, partner selection requires careful due diligence by bank CISOs. Not all vendors offer genuine financial industry expertise or support myriad regulations. Look for providers demonstrating:

Avoid general enterprise providers lacking recent experience securing significant banks and credit unions. The partner should have FinServ-specific use cases, integrations, and threat intelligence—vet knowledge of core banking systems and platforms. Require customer references from institutions like yours.
Validate that the provider has successfully protected well-known banks and credit unions at scale over many years. Check references and case studies. Longstanding bank customers indicate capabilities that stand up to real-world threats impacting institutions like yours.
Given banking's wide range of strict oversight, the platform should have out-of-the-box capabilities to comply with mandates like GDPR, GLBA, PCI-DSS, and NYDFS Cyber Regs based on integrated controls and automated workflows.
The USM platform should feature bidirectional APIs and connectors to integrate with your specific core banking systems, not just offer generic support. Tight integration enhances visibility and detection efficacy.

enhances visibility and detection efficacy.

Flexibility

Look for deployment options spanning on-premise, cloud and hybrid environments to align with your infrastructure. As you migrate between settings, the USM platform should flex accordingly.

Given perpetually limited security staff, the solution should leverage automation, artificial intelligence, and orchestration to improve efficiency and reduce monotonous human tasks.
Validate that the provider operates a dedicated banking-focused Cyber Threat Intelligence team fueling a roadmap driven by emerging financial sector threats, not just generic trends.
Opt for managed services providers if you need help administering and running security toolsets daily. MSS provides 24/7 outsourced support.
The right unified security partner understands financial institutions' unique threat landscape, constraints, and compliance obligations. They'll tailor offerings to maximize value for your environment.
Here is an outline comparing unified security management (USM) and unified threat management (UTM) solutions, expanded in NLP:

USM vs UTM: Key Differences

USM is often conflated with Unified threat management, UTM, which, although similar, offers fewer functions than USM.

Unified threat management (UTM) solutions consolidate multiple security capabilities like firewalling, VPN, web filtering, antivirus, and intrusion prevention onto a single appliance. While UTMs simplify management to some degree, significant limitations exist:

• UTMs focus on network perimeter protection, lacking visibility into clouds, endpoints, identities, data and other crucial areas.
• Threat detection relies only on essential signature-based tools rather than advanced analytics like UEBA and ML.
• Integrations with other security stacks are minimal, creating visibility gaps.
• Compliance reporting requires heavy manual work pulling data from various sources.
• User interfaces remain complex for analysts despite consolidation.

In contrast, unified security management (USM) delivers much broader integrated visibility, detection, compliance and control:

• Holistic visibility spans networks, endpoints, identities, clouds, data, apps, and threats.
• Advanced analytics like machine learning spot hidden threats missed by UTMs.
• Tight integrations with existing security tools via APIs enhance telemetry.
• Automated compliance reporting satisfies regulations out of the box.
• Intuitive single pane of glass UI enhances analyst productivity.
• It's a scalable cloud architecture that is suitable for complex banking environments. 
  

While UTM appliances provide convenience, unified security management delivers the depth of visibility, detection, automation and integrations vital for countering advanced threats targeting the modern bank. USM represents the next evolution in security consolidation.

Let me know if you need any clarification or expansion on the differences between unified security and threat management solutions. I'm happy to provide additional details and examples contrasting their capabilities and limitations.

The Bottom Line

With integrated visibility, detection, protection and compliance reporting, unified security management alleviates the burdens fragmented tools place on short-staffed bank security teams. Consolidation reduces risks and costs while positioning banks to prevent threats without more staff. Partnering with specialists like Microminder Cybersecurity aligns integrated capabilities with unique dangers and regulations impacting financial institutions. Unified security management is a force multiplier for banking cyber defence when leveraged strategically.

Are you looking for a Unified Security Management company? Hire Microminder CS to design robust Unified Security Management solutions for your network. Join over 2500 companies in the improvement and securing boundaries and operations. Book a call with us today and be the one to open the road for new opportunities to grow.