Why Your IT Discovery Process Has to Be on Point
According to a study by IBM, the average cyberattack costs $3.86 million. While this number is high, it’s not necessarily surprising, considering this next stat: It takes nearly 280 days to detect and contain a breach. That’s more than nine months. The $3.86 million average breach price tag would be significantly lower—perhaps even zero—with a comprehensive, well-orchestrated IT discovery process.
Protecting your organization from cyberattacks is only one benefit of IT discovery. It also allows you to optimize business processes and make it easier to comply with government regulations. Keep reading to learn the most compelling reasons why your IT discovery process should be on point.
Endpoint Visibility
Every endpoint is a potential vulnerability, especially with the growing prevalence of work-from-home environments and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Visibility into each endpoint enables you to ensure users are not introducing threats to the network. For example, with adequate IT discovery, you can attain endpoint visibility that prevents:
- Breaches from hackers that take advantage of weak network security features in the homes of remote workers
- Intrusion into your network when an employee connects to a public Wi-Fi network, such as in a coffee shop or airport
- Breaches using vulnerabilities in IoT devices or those whose owners neglected to change the default password
Single-Pane-of-Glass Monitoring
With an IT discovery tool like ServiceNow, you get a comprehensive view of your organization's IT infrastructure using a centralized monitoring console. You obtain an instant snapshot of the performance of different elements of your network, endpoints, and processes. For example, you can monitor the security of resources used by specific departments such as sales, marketing, engineering, and the company’s website.
You can also use single-pane-of-glass monitoring to check the performance of business-critical systems. For instance, if a newly installed application is causing a bottleneck that is negatively impacting the speed of other applications, you can see it in your monitoring solution. In this way, you can use your IT discovery process to tweak the performance of resources and systems on your network.
Faster Time to Resolution
An IT discovery process gives you full visibility into the systems, applications, and devices that are connected to your network, which can save you so much time when performing a root cause analysis of an incident that's causing downtime or performance issues. Whether it’s a payment portal, sensitive database, or key business system that’s impacted, your IT discovery process can cut down your reaction time to a fraction of what it would be otherwise.
This is particularly true with threats that need to spread in order to be effective. For example, worms, viruses, and Trojans all depend, at least in part, on the ability to spread laterally through your network.
However, with an IT discovery process in place, you can:
- Identify a worm before it replicates and spreads east or west
- Pinpoint a virus that’s been installed on an endpoint and then prevent that user from sending it to others in your company
- Identify a Trojan that may appear innocent and alert others in the organization of the nature of the threat
Because you’re able to stop and limit threats, the time it takes to return to normal operations after a breach is significantly less. This enhances resiliency and continuity, saving you money in the long run.
Streamline Regulatory Compliance
Remaining in compliance with government regulations regarding data security can be an expensive, time-consuming endeavor. With a comprehensive IT discovery process, on the other hand, several key elements of regulatory compliance can be automated, while others can be streamlined.
For example, IT operations management can orchestrate:
- Who is allowed to see certain kinds of sensitive data, such as patient records
- If and how specific types of data are stored—and for how long
- Who is informed regarding the management of sensitive data, when, and how.
The IT discovery process makes all of this possible by identifying the systems and data that fall under specific regulations.
Enhance Your IT Discovery Process with Managed Services by GSI
Using the discovery feature of ServiceNow, you can enhance the security and performance of your network while ensuring you remain in compliance with any applicable regulations. For instance, ServiceNow enables you to:
- Run quick discoveries
- Validate your results
- Discover systems operating in the cloud
- Manage certificates
- Custom-design discovery behaviors
- Analyze data collected by the ServiceNow ITOM so you can quickly fix anomalies before they turn into business-impacting problems
As you can see, ServiceNow offers a wealth of features and functionalities that can take your IT management processes to the next level. With assistance from GSI's ServiceNow experts, you can maximize the software's potential by fine-tuning it for use with your unique environment.
Contact GSI to learn more about GatewayNow or any of our ServiceNow consulting services offerings.
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