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Ponemon Report: Client Insights on Data Protection with IBM Security Guardium

By Michael Saldarriaga posted Thu September 12, 2019 02:48 PM

  

Blog by Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman & Founder, Ponemon Institute.


IT security teams are finding it increasingly difficult to protect against attackers who are persistent, sophisticated, well-trained and well-financed. Further, in most organizations there is a shortage of skilled data security staff who can quickly detect, assess and remediate the consequences of a breach.

Ponemon Institute recently conducted an independent study of IBM Guardium Data Protection clients to determine how this unified data protection platform is improving the ability of IT security teams to mitigate the risk of data compromise. All participants in the research use Guardium Data Protection to monitor and defend their company’s network and 65 percent say their organizations recognized value in less than one month following the deployment.

Watch the on-demand webinar to learn more from Dr. Ponemon!

For more than 20 years, I have been conducting research on data protection, privacy and information security. Our research has tracked and identified the many challenges organizations face in preventing and detecting cyber exploits and data breaches. In my opinion, Guardium significantly reduces the time and complexity associated with organizations detecting threats and compliance vulnerabilities across heterogeneous IT environments such as multi-cloud.

Likewise, Guardium users experienced the following average improvements in their ability to protect data:

  • The ability to accurately detect threats increased 43%
  • The time spent annually identifying and remediating data security issues decreased 42%
  • The ability to detect data source vulnerabilities or misconfigurations increased 67%
  • The ability to accurately classify data increased 50%
  • The time to prepare for an audit decreased 89%

While some complexity in an IT security architecture is expected in order to deal with the many threats facing organizations, too much complexity, as shown in research we’ve conducted, can restrict integrations that are essential for holistically detecting and visualizing vulnerabilities across different security technologies. This can greatly limit the productivity of IT security staff and impact their ability to respond to data security and compliance risks.

In other Ponemon Institute research, IT security teams often say the lack of visibility into the IT infrastructure and the inability to discover all unstructured data assets are serious security risks. As shown in Figure 1, companies in this research cited Guardium’s out-of-the-box discovery and classification patterns and the ability to discover and analyze both structured and unstructured data assets as very valuable, according to 72 percent and 68 percent of respondents, respectively.

Guardium users also say the most valuable feature is the ability to manage data risk across complex IT environments. Also shown in the figure, 86 percent of respondents say the ability to manage data risk across complex IT environments, such as the multi-cloud or hybrid cloud ecosystem. Using the same scale, respondents were asked to rate the value of features related to security.

Figure 1. The value of Guardium’s product features
1 = not valuable at all to 10 = very valuable, 7+ responses presented
A bar graph displaying the value that Guardium's features provide to clients

Guardium also can reduce the cost of a data breach. In the 2019 Cost of Data Breach Study, sponsored by IBM, the average cost of data breach globally increased from $3.86 million to $3.92 million. In the study, the use of automation like what is provided in Guardium can reduce the cost of a data breach significantly. According to the research, breaches at organizations that have not deployed security automation experienced breach costs that were 95 percent higher breaches at organizations with fully-deployed automation.

In conclusion, I believe IBM Guardium Data Protection has the ability to significantly strengthen an organization’s security posture. To read the full report, click here.

Watch our on-demand webinar to discover more of the results from this study on IBM Security Guardium.

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Tue September 17, 2019 11:21 AM

These survey results align to my personal experience with Guardium customers over the last 10 years. Great read!