6 Ways Application Control Benefits You

Around the world, the average cost of a data breach has now reached $4.45 million (and $9.4 million in the U.S.). It's enough to prompt at least half of organizations that have suffered a breach to make the security investments they need to help prevent another.

Are you really protecting every asset? Security leaders who believe their environment is fully locked down are often surprised to learn that many potentially at-risk assets remain largely unprotected. Standard "good enough" security typically doesn't address these potential exposure points:

• Fixed function devices like kiosks and medical devices
• Air-gapped systems that are disconnected from the internet
• End of Life Operating Systems (EOL OS) such as XP and Windows Server 2003 and 2008
• Critical systems using proprietary software and data

At a time when CISOs and other security leaders are responsible for complying with increasing data privacy and security mandates, leaving any corner of your environment exposed has the potential to turn security risk into business risk. And with every transaction on public-facing POS systems vulnerable, you need more than physical security to protect customer and transaction data.

The power of positivity. Application control solutions efficiently lock down those exposed assets by employing a positive (default/deny) security model to protect against bad actors trying to gain access to your environment. This differs from traditional negative security models that rely on tools and intel that help you detect and stop known bad events. Don’t get us wrong—negative security is crucial. But it can leave too many assets exposed. Application control solutions supplement negative security protections by allowing access only to trusted (or known good) resources.

6 benefits of application control

How can the right application control solution help you? Let's review the benefits—and what to look for in an application control solution.

1. Reduce business risk. Increasingly, IT and security risk equates to business risk. That's because breaches can threaten your company's brand and reputation—which is a threat to the business itself. More advanced application control solutions enable you to secure every corner of your environment, especially those overlooked by traditional security solutions.
2. Ensure continuous compliance with regulatory mandates. Breaches aren't the only risk you face. Failed audits come with their own costs, headaches and mitigation fire drills. Look for solutions that provide full coverage—both across public and private clouds as well as on-premises data centers—so you can meet PCI-DSS, Common Criteria and other security and privacy mandates.
3. Close your gaps—and your exposures. Migrating data, services and applications to the cloud can inadvertently create security gaps. The right application control solution will give you full visibility into your environment, both on-premises and in the cloud, so you don't overlook an air-gapped system, fixed-function device, EOL software or other potential target.
4. Eliminate unauthorized changes to your environment. Application control, using a default/deny security posture, allows only known good software to run in your environment. A best practice would be to deploy a holistic solution that also includes file integrity monitoring and control, device control, registry protection and memory protection.
5. Save time, money and resources. Application control doesn't have to continually tie up resources. In fact, the right solution will allow you to manage policies from a single, centralized location—rather than through other tools. This makes application control effective, efficient and affordable.
6. Strengthen your zero trust foundation. Application control aligns with zero trust principles by automatically denying access to your environment until you confirm software can be trusted. Look for solutions that don't force you to maintain a list or library of trusted software—instead, seek out one that employs multiple approval methods, including IT and cloud-driven trust, trusted publishers, custom rules and validated external sources.

Lock it all down with Carbon Black App Control

With so much at stake and new threats emerging daily, there's never been a better time to deploy a robust positive security solution. Carbon Black App Control, for instance, takes a holistic view of application control with additional protections, including:

• File Integrity Monitoring detects whether sensitive files, registry keys and folders within the host OS have been altered or compromised.
• File Integrity Control rejects files showing evidence of tampering.
• Device Control provides full control to define, restrict or block data transfer from external storage media, such as USB devices.
• Memory Protection prevents a process from accessing memory that has not been allocated to it.
• Registry Protection prevents system critical registry keys on Windows from being modified—a protection against potential irreversible damage.

Purpose-built for highly regulated businesses. Built especially for the unique challenges faced by organizations in highly regulated industries, Carbon Black App Control provides CISOs, security managers, SOC analysts and others with something you can't often find in just any software solution: peace of mind.

With a comprehensive solution like Carbon Black App Control, you can:

• Employ a positive security approach in your data center and on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or hosted private clouds.
• Meet IT risk and audit controls across major regulatory mandates.
• Employ flexible policy controls that meet you where your business is.
• Inform trust decisions based on multiple approval methods.
• Stop malware, ransomware and next-gen attacks.
• Reduce unplanned downtime of critical systems.
• Prevent unwanted changes to system configuration.
• Protect legacy systems running on EOL operating systems.
• Identify all software in critical environments.

Ready for more? Explore everything that Carbon Black by Broadcom and Carbon Black App Control can do for you: https://www.broadcom.com/info/cybersecurity/carbon-black