Get real-time visibility on the effectiveness of your security controls. Identify potential and ongoing threats to execute the correct mitigation solutions and minimize business impact.
What Is Continuous Control Monitoring?
In cybersecurity, continuous control monitoring (CCM) refers to the automated, ongoing process of checking whether an organization’s security and compliance controls are working properly. Instead of relying solely on periodic audits and risk assessments, this process uses continuous control monitoring tools to gather real-time data, identify issues, and enable faster fixes.
CCM for cybersecurity is vital for proactive risk management and enhanced compliance. At a time when cyber attacks are rampant, with phishing and ransomware threats impacting organizations daily, continuous monitoring detects system vulnerabilities before they can cause irreversible damage.
Key Benefits of Continuous Control Monitoring
Continuous control monitoring is key to maintaining the overall health and performance of your organization’s security controls. Its primary function is automating system evaluations for real-time cyberthreat assessment. A high-functioning CCM tool offers the following capabilities and benefits:
- Proactive threat detection: CCM tools verify whether controls are actually detecting and preventing attacks, surfacing drift and misconfigurations before they become incidents.
- Reduced risk of incidents: CCM identifies security gaps on critical assets and prioritizes remediation based on potential business impact.
- Streamlined incident response: CCM uses insights to accelerate triage and containment, facilitating shorter times to remediation and implementing responses before incidents can be exploited.
- Improved compliance and auditing: CCM reduces manual sampling and audit fatigue and helps preserve an audit trail of fixes for compliance.
- Informed decision-making: CCM provides leadership with real-time insights for better and more informed decision-making.
- Cost reduction: CCM reduces manual testing, eliminates rework, and allocates resources to changes with the greatest risk reduction.
How ThreatConnect Helps Ensure Continuous Control Monitoring
ThreatConnect empowers chief information security officers (CISOs) by providing near real-time visibility into their respective organizations’ security controls. We work with governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) teams to provide updated audit reports that identify threats and vulnerabilities and implement risk mitigation strategies.
Risk Quantifier is a continuous controls monitoring software that actively detects threats and quickly assesses which remediation solution can deliver the most significant risk reduction. Here’s how ThreatConnect helps your organization stay protected from cyber attacks:
- Contextualization: See which security controls are live on your infrastructure, where they’re deployed, and what they protect. Configure controls and assign them to your most important systems.
- Prioritization: Identify issues and rank them according to their potential business impact. Leverage RQ to estimate exposure and help you prioritize which issues need fixing first.
- Telemetry: Turn insights into action. Validate changes in real time and continue monitoring even as your environment changes to prevent control drift.
Specific Use Cases of Continuous Control Monitoring Cybersecurity Solutions
CCM tools are essential cybersecurity measures in various sectors and industries. They’re vital in streamlining processes, centralizing communication, enhancing customer experience, and ensuring compliance. Here’s how different sectors and industries can find use for ThreatConnect’s continuous control monitoring solution:
- Utilities and telecommunications: Reduce outages and safety risks by monitoring OT/IT segmentation, remote access to substations and network gear, privileged access, logging, and retention. Manage customer communications, including service-related notifications, billing, and payments.
- Banking and finance: Provide real-time visibility into security controls and implement the necessary remediation measures. Assess the potential financial impact of a cyber incident for proper reporting and external disclosures.
- Insurance: Optimize communications while maintaining strict adherence to regulations, such as policy documents and claims. Automate data collection and analysis for accurate risk assessments. Simplify the application process and enhance insurance terms based on a data-driven security posture.
- Healthcare: CCM helps healthcare organizations demonstrate compliance with regulations and mitigate downtime risks for clinical operations. Monitor electronic health record access controls, track assets throughout their lifespan, and identify vulnerabilities in cloud configurations.
- Conglomerates and companies with complex IT: Control baseline consistency across subsidiaries, mergers and acquisitions, asset inventory, and cross-cloud posture. Manage divergent policies by business units, establish a common control language, and centralize visibility.
Why Trust ThreatConnect?
ThreatConnect offers an innovative solution for continuous control monitoring. We leverage our industry expertise to create CCM software that keeps up with the times, helping organizations move beyond static spreadsheets and outdated audits. We take pride in our numerous industry awards and recognitions, which demonstrate our excellence in cybersecurity risk assessment and mitigation.
Learn more about the real-world applications of ThreatConnect’s cybersecurity solutions through our customer stories.
Revolutionize Risk and Compliance With CCM Solutions
Anticipate cybersecurity challenges to your business with ease and deploy the correct fixes before incidents impact operations. Integrate ThreatConnect’s advanced continuous control monitoring solutions into your system. Request a demo today to talk to our experts and discuss your cybersecurity concerns.