Overview

Security relies more on operations (70%) than on technology (30%). Security operations protect cloud resources, data, and applications through continuous monitoring, detection, response, and improvement. This highlights that security is an ongoing process, not a one-time task. Effective security operations are essential to coordinate multiple defense layers and ensure the secure, stable operations of service systems and key data. However, security operations face many challenges.

• Complex security systems

  As digital transformation progresses, the ICT environment of enterprises becomes more complex. Cloud computing, network channels, devices, edge computing, operating systems, databases, and applications interweave to form a large, complex ecosystem. Each component may involve potential security vulnerabilities, increasing the difficulty of overall security management. Additionally, the fragmented security industry exacerbates this complexity. The market is saturated with numerous security vendors, each offering different products and solutions. This results in a lot of logs and data in various formats, with no unified standards. Consequently, integrating and analyzing security information is challenging, and forming a global security situation awareness is nearly impossible.

  Moreover, increasing compliance requirements pose new challenges for enterprises. Laws and regulations, such as China's Cybersecurity Law, Data Security Law, and Personal Information Protection Law, the EU's GDPR, the financial industry's PCI-DSS, and the healthcare industry's HIPPA, impose strict requirements on data privacy and cybersecurity. Enterprises must invest significant resources to meet compliance standards across different regions and industries, adding to their management burden.

  In addition, the attack methods are becoming increasingly complex. Attackers use AI and machine learning technologies to accelerate the iteration of attack tools and methods. For example, an advanced persistent threat (APT) is a covert and persistent network attack. Attackers, usually well-resourced organizations or criminal groups, have clear objectives. They lurk for extended periods, using various advanced technologies to steal sensitive data or damage target systems. APT attacks are difficult to detect and defend against and are extremely harmful.

  In summary, the complexity of the security system arises from the diversified technical environments, fragmented security industry, stringent compliance requirements, and complex attack methods. To address current security challenges, enterprises need to establish a unified security management platform to integrate various security information and enhance overall protection capabilities.

• Lack of security experts

  The shortage of security experts is a significant bottleneck for enterprises' secure operations. First, due to limited investment, many enterprises cannot build large security teams and thus lack professional security talent. The security field is highly specialized, and it takes considerable time to cultivate a qualified security expert with extensive experience and skills. Moreover, there is no effective mechanism for systematically accumulating and transferring the experience and knowledge of security experts. When experts leave, valuable experience is lost, causing significant harm to enterprises.

  Frequent security incidents also overburden experts, whose energy is often consumed by routine operations such as handling numerous security alarms, analyzing logs, and performing routine security checks. These tasks, though important, are repetitive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive, preventing experts from focusing on more valuable work like security strategy planning, complex threat analysis, and security system optimization.

  Additionally, as attack technologies evolve, security experts must continuously learn and update their knowledge to maintain their professional level, which further increases their pressure and burden. In the competitive talent market, retaining security experts is also a major challenge.

  To address the shortage of security experts, enterprises need to increase investment in security talent cultivation and establish robust training and promotion mechanisms. They can also leverage automation and intelligent tools to reduce repetitive tasks for experts, allowing them to focus on core security affairs. Establishing a knowledge management system to accumulate and share expert experience can mitigate risks caused by talent loss.

• Inefficient security operations

  Inefficient security operations are a common issue for enterprises. First, the sheer volume of risk alarms is overwhelming. Security devices generate numerous alarms daily, many of which are false positives or redundant. Security personnel struggle to filter and address all alarms promptly, leading to potential oversight of real threats amidst the noise.

  Second, threat identification is slow. Complex security events require extensive manual analysis due to the lack of intelligent tools, delaying the determination of threat nature and severity. This reactive approach can miss critical response windows, allowing security incidents to escalate.

  Additionally, event response and handling are slow. The process from detection to action involves multiple departments and personnel, making coordination complex. Manual operations are prone to omissions and errors, affecting the response efficiency.

  The root cause is the absence of efficient security operations mechanisms and tools. Traditional methods cannot keep pace with the rapidly evolving security landscape. To enhance security operations efficiency, enterprises must adopt advanced Security Operations Centers (SOCs) and leverage big data analysis and machine learning to automate alarm correlation and prioritization. They should also implement automated response tools to expedite event handling and establish standardized processes and collaboration frameworks to boost cross-departmental efficiency. Furthermore, it is crucial to train security personnel to enhance their analytical and decision-making skills.

  In summary, improving security operations efficiency requires advancements in both technology and management. Only by building an efficient and agile security operations system can enterprises respond to threats promptly and safeguard their core service systems and data.