According to the findings, even though IT operations personnel help influence the selection of cyber security tools, nearly two out of three say complexity in deployment (30 percent) and complexity in daily use (34 percent) are the biggest hindrances in security tool effectiveness.
“Security tools that are complex to deploy and difficult to use on a daily basis can negatively impact the tool’s effectiveness,” said Joseph Carson, chief security scientist at Thycotic. “If IT Ops does not adopt and even embrace a security tool, it risks becoming a waste of time and money while failing to adequately protect critical information assets.”
Additional findings from the survey revealed that IT Ops were involved in implementing a wide variety of cybersecurity solutions over the past year---an indication of how essential they are to the “people” and “process” roles of a successful security strategy. Nearly half the respondents cited involvement in antivirus/antimalware tools and multi-factor authentication projects while another one third listed vulnerability scanning, privileged access management, and removing administrator privileges.
When asked specifically about the most important attributes for privileged account management tools, survey participants cited “Easy to Deploy” as No. 1 (26 percent) just ahead of Automation (25 percent) - along with Integration with other technologies (11 percent) and a Cloud deployment option (10 percent). For least privilege enforcement tools, Easy to Deploy (23 percent) was considered the most desirable attribute, closely followed by automation (21.5 percent), and a cloud deployment option (15 percent).