Do You Understand the Importance of Both ‘Observability’ and ‘Visibility’ from an IT Security Perspective?
Technology teams have been chasing security visibility for decades, trying to ferret out the deepest secrets and uncover shifts within your network infrastructure that could point to potential security flaws or breaches. While important, visibility only provides a fraction of the picture that comes together to make up your network security standards. Pulling together security logs and tying together point solutions can only take you so far — which is when observability helps to turn the tide in the race to protect against security risks.
Understanding IT Security Visibility
Often referred to as a “single pane of glass”, IT security visibility seeks to aggregate vast quantities of input and provide a more cohesive — albeit high-level — view into the network and overall security. As technology platforms increase in complexity and shift between cloud and on-premise architectures within the same organization, monitoring becomes exponentially more challenging. Defining the necessary metrics and solutions for monitoring within set parameters has worked relatively well for years, but the mounting threat to business security demands a new approach to this vital role.
Incorporating Observability into IT Security Standards
Visibility is certainly the cornerstone of IT security operations, but are there shifts needed to keep pace with the digital transformations that companies are driving? The addition of machine learning and the easy access to computing power work together to create a more proactive approach to security operations. Observability refers to a system’s ability to diagnose what is happening inside a process or system through means of visible, external information such as:
- Log analysis
- Monitoring
- Metrics
- Tracing
Machine learning is an extraordinarily powerful tool that can detect, analyze and provide insight on a near-unlimited number of inputs to provide errors and anomalies that point towards a future failure of specific systems.
Technology advances and shifts to cloud-based software can create an environment where the complexity is too great for individuals to project future fail points without the aid of an active tool such as machine learning. While visibility and observability may sound quite similar, the outcome of the two activities is worlds apart.
Creating Reactive Hyper-Automations to Enhance Security
Modernizing security operations offers a new way to define a baseline understanding of our current network infrastructure and systems. Weaving AI and machine learning into this structure is where IT security professionals are able to enhance their insight and proactively shore up defenses. Observability helps SecOps professionals dig deep into ‘why’ something happened while creating triggers based on deviations from a healthy system. This hyper-automation helps reduce overall IT security risks and makes the outputs from systems more observable and trackable over time.
Providing a Secure and Reliable IT Infrastructure for Your Business
Understanding which strategies to put in place begins with having an IT services partner that fully understands the inner workings of your business operations. That requires a hands-on, detailed analysis of your current systems and future needs as well as a proactive approach to security. The professionals at Outsource IT Solutions Group have decades of experience ensuring that your security operations are tight and well-managed, creating reliable networks and business systems that are flexible enough to support the needs of evolving organizations. Contact our team at 630-701-3393 to schedule a complimentary initial consultation or reach out to our team online anytime.
