Each week, we see new public disclosures about companies impacted by cybersecurity breaches. Sure, it’s easy to say, “How could this have happened?” or, “They weren’t trying hard enough!” But the reality is that most companies are just flat-out overwhelmed. Below are a few reasons why.

1. Velocity of innovation: Companies are undergoing significant digital transformation by rapidly redeveloping applications, shifting to DevOps, and migrating to cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery models. Security teams struggle to keep pace.
2. Increasing complexity: Security threats, such as ransomware, evolve rapidly, and archaic security architectures are just too complicated to adapt quickly. It’s not uncommon to see companies with 85 or more security tools in use and, quite often, these tools are poorly integrated and suboptimized, resulting in blind spots and alert fatigue.
3. Skills gap: The shortage of cybersecurity skills is real, and current estimates project 1.8 million unfilled security jobs by 2022. Therefore, attracting, training and retaining security talent is a major challenge.
4. Poor response readiness: Security teams tend to focus the majority of their effort on threat prevention and detection but often overlook the importance of preparing and testing their response plans and playbooks. In fact, a recent Ponemon study found that 77 percent of companies still have no formal response plan.
5. Imbalanced approach to threat management: Experience tells us that clients focus the majority of their resources on threat prevention and detection while overlooking the importance of business and threat insights, response and recovery preparedness (see graphic below).

Meet IBM X-Force Threat Management

Designed by clients for clients, IBM X-Force Threat Management offers a smarter security solution to manage the 360-degree life cycle. By establishing a modern partnership, IBM Security experts collaborate with clients on a prescriptive journey toward improved threat management maturity.

With IBM X-Force Threat Management, clients’ security teams benefit from the global power of IBM Security expertise and innovation and tap into an integrated ecosystem of security partners. Clients are supported through a flexible delivery model consisting of our global and regional X-Force Command Centers along with local on-site experts.

This is made possible by leveraging our new, innovative X-Force Protection Platform, the engine underpinning X-Force Threat Management, which currently processes over 2 trillion security events per month using Watson artificial intelligence (AI), behavioral analytics and intelligent orchestration powered by Resilient.

The X-Force Protection Platform integrates with a strong partner ecosystem, including but not limited to Carbon Black, Crowdstrike, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Checkpoint. The platform will extend to clients via a new mobile experience that puts the information and the ability to take action directly in the palms of their hands.

With IBM X-Force Threat Management, our clients will be able to:

• Accelerate security by keeping pace with digital transformation and dramatically reducing the response time against threats.
• Mitigate liability by minimizing brand damage and reducing exposure to regulatory, financial and privacy risks.
• Manage complexity by streamlining fragmented approaches to threat management with prescriptive processes, tools and expertise.
• Extend expertise by leveraging X-Force as a force multiplier across their security team.

We invite you to learn more at our exclusive May 29 webinar, “Tired of Your MSSP Not Innovating?”

Explore the new mobile app, which allows users to assess the latest happenings in the world of cyber security intelligence, news and even test your threat maturity with the “What’s My Score” assessment aligned to NIST Cyber Framework. Download the mobile app for Apple and Android.

Learn more about IBM X-Force Threat Management Services