Identifying risk in your application portfolio

With the advent of digital transformation, it is not astonishing, that refining application security posture is of utmost priority for businesses. As organizations increasingly rely on applications to enable their evolving business needs, keeping track of the long list of applications and their distinct purposes may be difficult to monitor. It can be even more arduous to keep up with the volume of security work that is involved.

While technology is undoubtedly fundamental to an organization's growth strategy, managing digital risks is critical as you grow your application portfolio. Today it is no longer sufficient for risk professionals to monitor or mitigate risks, but rather to streamline risk processes.  An integrated application ecosystem is key to synchronizing data in real-time and enabling effective security controls.

Application security doesn’t end with the software’s configurations. It extends into the office, the training programs, and into your business processes. While risk evaluation, controls effectiveness, and segregation and separation of duties (SODs) will play crucial roles in enhancing security in an organization’s application portfolio, protecting your enterprise data in this new hybrid and a multi-layered cloud environment is a shared responsibility between you and your application providers.

It’s a complete ecosystem in which all parts must work in concert to be effective. It starts with a target operating model (TOM), a blueprint designed to align your strategic objectives with the capabilities and processes required to achieve them. From there, of course, it’s all about execution—implementing, enforcing, and auditing the proper controls, monitoring for ongoing risks, and responding to threats.