The Dark Knights of Digital Defense

For most businesses, IT and security teams go about their work mostly unnoticed. Some would say that’s by design. Like the stage hands that help make a good show possible and keep everything moving smoothly, these are the invisible team members. Until something goes wrong. Then they’re the center of attention. 

These professionals work tirelessly behind the scenes, safeguarding our digital infrastructure, preventing breaches, and ensuring business continuity. Day in and day out. But the perception doesn’t match. They can save the day 9 days out of 10 and all anyone will remember is the one day their efforts fall short. 

It’s not only unfair, but it’s bad for morale and contributes to a fundamental misunderstanding of the work.

Overtasked and Under-tooled

The truth is, the work of IT and security teams is complex and challenging. But that only makes it even more essential. It also makes it more prone to human error and oversights. This fact is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in endpoint configurations.

Whether they’re setup missteps, bad defaults, unenforced policies, or un-patchable vulnerabilities – misconfigurations are a big problem. 

While it's relatively straightforward to solve problems that have to do with how technology is designed, it's a lot harder to solve problems to do with how it’s used. With no clear defects to fix and no universal standards to follow, context is key. It depends on your specific needs, your appetite for risk, your compliance requirements, your technological dexterity, and your operational dependencies. 

And here’s the kicker: IT and security teams are expected to manage and maintain secure endpoint configurations with virtually no support. They’re told to lean into their visibility and monitoring instruments and rely on their EDRs. But beyond that, it’s just hopes and prayers.

When it comes to orchestration, validation and context-aware recommendations, they’re totally on their own. 

Combine the lack of adequate tooling with the complicated context and the staggering scale of network endpoints, and it’s little surprise that:

• 35% of all security incidents start with misconfigurations
• 80% of ransomware attacks exploit misconfigurations
• 73% of orgs have at least one critical misconfigurations

The worst part is that even when conscientious operators try to get ahead of the problem – aggressively seeking out and securing risky configurations – they may still be doing themselves in.

With complex and often opaque interdependencies, each security fix can result in lost or broken functionality. When the business depends on that functionality, IT and security teams will again find themselves in front of the firing squad. 

The tooling provided doesn’t even come close to matching the magnitude of their responsibilities. Many are left grappling with outdated, inefficient systems that don’t fully support their needs or reflect their pivotal role in the company.

Powering Up to Change the Narrative

When systems are functioning properly, no one notices the countless hours spent maintaining, updating, and securing them. It's only when a breach occurs or a vulnerability is exposed that these professionals find themselves thrust into the limelight—often unfairly, and usually to fix a problem they’ve been warning about all along.

It’s time to change the narrative. Our unsung heroes deserve better. 

They deserve tools that not only meet the challenges they face but empower them to shine. Tools that go beyond visibility to automate time-consuming tasks, support compliance, and validate the effectiveness of policies and actions taken.

It’s time for tools that make it easy to demonstrate value – showing actions taken, achievements made, time saved, and problems solved. And most importantly, IT and security teams need tools that change the equation – so that instead of working at odds, security and business continuity can be pursued in parallel. 

GYTPOL is a tool designed exactly for that purpose. It automatically detects insecure and imprudent configurations and issues alerts sorted according to severity, security group, device type, and attack vector. These alerts can then be bulk-actioned and remediated with the push of a button.

In this way GYTPOL helps IT and security teams quickly identify and respond to threats before they become crises.  It automates and error-proofs configuration security management tasks – freeing up resources for other projects, while improving operational efficiency and effectiveness

Instead of merely reacting to incidents, modern tools should empower teams to proactively remove risks. With the right tools, IT and security teams can not only be the heroes that the rest of the organization needs, but the heroes they deserve to be.