Why Organizations Should Be Tracking IT Risk by Business Unit

Cyber risk is a pervasive and persistent challenge for any organization, especially those with distributed and siloed business units that operate under different management structures and with different technologies. Without a comprehensive and accurate view of cyber risk posture across all departments, organizations may face difficulties in prioritizing vulnerabilities, complying with regulations, securing budgets, and collaborating effectively.

That’s why, after working directly with customers, Tanium developed the Organizational Risk Scoring with Benchmark experience, a dashboard built on top of Tanium Benchmark that presents a single view of an organization’s IT risk with a cyber risk score by sub-department, unit, and an aggregate view of the organization as a whole — regardless of whether a central IT group manages them. Teams can then drill down into each risk score to see the real-time data directly from the endpoint contributing to that score and then pivot to remediation — all within the same view.

In this blog post, we will explore how Tanium’s Organizational Risk Scoring with Benchmark can help you address some of the common challenges and pain points of managing cyber risk across business units and how it can deliver key benefits for your organization.

The challenges of tracking IT risk by business unit

Many organizations, especially in the public sector, have multiple business units that operate under different IT management structures. For example, a state government may have several agencies, departments, and offices that use different technologies, have separate budgets, and have varied spheres of influence. A university may have different colleges, campuses, and faculties that have their own IT teams and policies.

This diversity and complexity can pose significant challenges for tracking and managing IT risk across the organization, such as:

• Lack of real-time visibility: Most tools used for cyber risk management do not collect data from the endpoint in real time but rely on stale databases or periodic scans that can cause network disruptions and performance issues, which leads to an outdated and inaccurate view of risk posture and delays the response and remediation of vulnerabilities and misconfiguration.
• Data normalization issues: Measuring cyber risk across different tool sets and distributed business units can be very difficult and time-consuming, as the data needs to be normalized and aggregated manually. This can cause errors and inconsistencies and hamper initiatives like preparing for audits, proving cyber hygiene for cyber insurance, and practicing day-to-day IT management
• Opaque view into cyber risk for decision makers: Without a single and holistic view of cyber risk across all departments, it can be hard to communicate and share the impact of IT and security investments with the stakeholders and budget holders. It can also be challenging to align the different business units on the best practices and standards for cyber hygiene and to foster a culture of collaboration and accountability.
• Unclear risk prioritization and remediation: Without a clear and consistent way of calculating and comparing risk scores across business units, it can be hard to prioritize the vulnerabilities or misconfigurations that correlate to the highest risk and allocate resources and efforts accordingly. Remediating the risks across multiple tools can also be cumbersome and inefficient, requiring context switching and manual intervention.

[Read also: The ultimate guide to cyber hygiene]

How Tanium can help you track IT risk by business unit

Tanium’s Organizational Risk Scoring with Benchmark is a solution to overcome these challenges and gain a comprehensive and actionable view of your cyber risk across all business units. Built on top of the Tanium Benchmark solution by Tanium technical experts, the dashboard gives a holistic view of an organization’s risk to solve common challenges for dispersed departments. Here are some of the key benefits of using Tanium’s Organizational Risk Scoring with Benchmark:

• Minimize your attack surface: Tanium offers real-time data collected directly from the endpoint to inform the metrics included in the cyber risk score. The dashboard enables immediate remediation of the risk score components, making it easy to find and fix issues directly from the dashboard without logging into other tools. You can significantly improve your cyber hygiene and minimize your endpoint cyber risk by managing patches, software updates, configurations, and more at scale in one platform.
• Benchmark risk across all departments in real time: Tanium gives you real-time information on all your endpoints and helps you identify vulnerability and compliance gaps. You can view a comprehensive risk score for each business unit and an aggregate view for the whole organization. You can also plan and schedule patches based on risk calculations so that your most critical systems are always prioritized.
• Promote information-sharing and cross-team collaboration: Tanium provides a single, accurate, and impact-based view of risks that eliminates conflicting information between departments. Intuitive visualization helps align stakeholders to the value delivered by IT and security investments and the urgency and importance of risk reduction. The holistic risk score drives continuous awareness of endpoint security posture and fosters a culture of collaboration and accountability across business units.

Reduce cyber risk across your organization

Tanium’s Organizational Risk Scoring with Benchmark is a powerful and innovative feature that can help you track your cyber risk in real-time across business units, remediate issues on your endpoints, and watch your cyber risk decrease in an easy-to-digest dashboard.

Whether you are a school district, a university, a state or local government, or any other organization with multiple and diverse business units, Tanium can help you measure, report on, and lower your cyber risk with a single view for all departments and take action to remediate issues in real time.

If you want to learn more about how Tanium can help you track IT risk by business unit, you can schedule a personalized demo. You can also learn more about Tanium Benchmark or read more about the risk dashboard.