Reduce IT Security Risks with Virima IT Asset Management

 As the IT industry continues to grow and evolve, so do the IT security risks associated with it.

According to a 2022 report by Verizon, 82% of IT security risks involved the human element. The causes of these breaches ranged from use of stolen credentials and Phishing to misuse or simply an error. 

One of the best ways to reduce these IT security risks is through IT asset management (ITAM). The purpose of ITAM is to ensure that all your company’s data is safe by tracking any assets that might be vulnerable to hacking or theft. By identifying what IT equipment is at risk, you can take steps to protect it—and prevent any damage from occurring in the first place.

Reducing risk is a continual process, and you need to account for new technology and new vulnerabilities. Asset management is critical in the fight against cyberattacks because it helps organizations ensure that they are properly safeguarded against a breach of security.

3 Strategies to Reduce IT Security Risks with IT Asset Management

Strategy 1: Identify and Prioritize Critical Assets

To effectively manage your assets, you must first be able to identify them. By conducting an asset inventory, you can determine which systems need the most attention when it comes to security. This will help you create a baseline of security needs so that you can continue monitoring their compliance throughout the year.

A powerful ITAM tool like Virima, you can get all the information you need from one integrated platform. When  integrated with Virima’s Discovery, it gives you a full view of your entire environment—from hardware to software, and everything in between. 

When it comes to prioritizing critical assets, Virima ITAM makes it easy for you by providing a list of actionable items right on your dashboard so that you can take immediate action.

Strategy 2: Conduct Regular Audits and Assessments

Once you have identified your critical assets, it’s time for an audit! The best way to conduct this is by creating a checklist that covers all aspects of your organization’s IT security policies and procedures. You should include both high-level items (e.g., encryption) as well as specific details related to data backups or passwords stored in documents on shared drives within your organization (e.g., encryption). 

This will ensure that your entire team is operating under similar guidelines when dealing with sensitive data or devices used by employees every day at work—which leads us into our final step…

Strategy 3: Train Your Team on Security Best Practices

This strategy is probably one of the most important ones because it involves getting all relevant stakeholders who manage your assets to understand how they protect said assets against cyberattacks or other security threats.

Your employees must be familiar with how to recognize and report suspicious activity. They should also have a basic understanding of how their actions impact the security of your organization. In addition, they should know what actions they can take to counteract potential threats, such as keeping an eye on the latest security news and staying up-to-date on the latest software updates. 

If you want your employees to protect your company from cyber attacks and other threats, then make sure they’re fully trained in ITAM.

How can ITAM help with risk management?

While risk management can be a daunting challenge, it doesn’t have to be. The first step is understanding what IT assets your business has, and then using that knowledge to identify the most critical risks and vulnerabilities. You’ll also want to know what information you need to protect those assets and how best to do so. Finally, it’s important for businesses to have an effective process for identifying new threats as soon as possible—and ITAM will help with all of these things!

ITAM can help reduce the risk of overspending on technology.

ITAM is an important part of risk management. It helps you know what you have, what you need, and what you are spending on it. This knowledge can help your company avoid overspending on technology. An intuitive  ITAM tool like Virima can help with this problem by giving you the tools to know what’s going on with your technology costs so that you can make informed decisions about whether or not something is worth purchasing. 

For example, consider an an app costing $5/month. Say, it has 10 million users. Only 2% of those users are active on any given day. If each user spends less than $1 in app purchases per month, then it’s likely not worth purchasing that app.

ITAM can identify risks and vulnerabilities before they become threats.

ITAM can help you identify risks and vulnerabilities before they become threats. It is an effective approach to managing risk because it focuses on identifying, quantifying and analyzing threats in advance of their occurrence. When coupled with a comprehensive vulnerability assessment, ITAM can provide you with actionable information that will help drive better decision making across your organization.

Cybersecurity isn’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

You can’t prevent everything from happening, but you can prepare for the worst-case scenario.

ITAM can help prevent security breaches

When you use ITAM to manage your procurement, it can help reduce the risk of overspending on technology. It also helps you identify risks and vulnerabilities before they become threats, which is a proactive way to minimize your overall risk.

With a complete, proactive solution like Virima ITAM, you can keep your network and data secure by proactively identifying and remediating vulnerabilities and then tracking their resolution. With Virima ITAM, you’ll have a complete view of your IT risk situation at all times. You’ll be able to see who makes the changes and when, how many machines are running outdated software, and much more.

Adequately managing your IT assets will lower security costs and allow your organization to pay for the most important needs first.

• ITAM can help you prioritize your security spending.
• ITAM can help identify what assets are most important to protect, and how much you should be spending on them relative to other assets.
• ITAM helps organizations prioritize security spending for their most important assets, so they can pay for the things that matter most and not worry about those items that aren’t as critical or likely to become a liability down the line.

ITAM is essential for keeping your business running smoothly, even with a low budget for technology.

Even with a low budget for technology, you can use an ITAM program to identify and remove redundant hardware and software. The process of identifying unused equipment gives your business the opportunity to streamline operations and reduce costs without sacrificing productivity or customer service.

Reducing risk is a continual process

Reducing risk is a continual process, and you need to account for new technology and new vulnerabilities.

ITAM is the best tool for reducing your organization’s risk because it allows you to track all of your assets, whether they’re physical or virtual, throughout their lifecycle. You can use IT asset management software that integrates with other critical applications such as security and help desk tools. This will allow you to get the most out of your ITAM solution by minimizing duplicate effort across teams and providing an integrated view of all assets in your environment.

Privileged accounts are a common target for attackers. Once they gain access to these credentials, they can easily move around your network and compromise systems with very little effort. Today’s threat landscape is complex and dynamic. It requires an intelligent approach to be able to mitigate new and emerging risks in real time. 

The first step in protecting your business is understanding it so that you can focus on the threats that matter mostYou can then use this information to identify critical assets and implement the controls necessary to protect them from loss or damage by unauthorized users. 

For example, you may use an IT asset management software like Virima ITAM that integrates with other critical applications such as security and help desk tools. This will allow you to get the most out of your ITAM solution by minimizing duplicate effort across teams and providing an integrated view of all assets in your environment.

Control Unmanaged Endpoints

Unmanaged endpoints are devices that are not part of the corporate network and whose security cannot be managed. These devices may be computers, printers, mobile phones, tablets and other connected devices. Unmanaged endpoints are a major security risk as they can be infected with malware or compromised by attackers and used to gain access to a corporate network.

Virima ITAM solution can help you secure your unmanaged endpoints. With Virima ITAM, you can track the location of all your devices, including unconnected and compromised assets.

This will help you find them quickly if they’re stolen or lost, so you don’t lose any valuable information on them. If necessary, you can even remotely wipe all data from each device so that it isn’t available even if it’s recovered by an attacker.

Enforce Password Policies

• Passwords should be strong.
• Passwords should be changed regularly.
• Each password should be unique for each account, with no exceptions.
• Passwords should never be shared across accounts, even if you’re using the same password manager app to store all of your login credentials. This means it’s okay  to use a single password for your email account and social media accounts, but not for your banking information or credit cards.
• The most important thing when it comes to maintaining strong passwords is using a strong, unique password generator that’s not easily guessed by hackers or phished from users’ computers via malware (phishing software). If you want an easy way out of this without having to remember all those different passwords yourself, consider looking into the use of a secure password manager like LastPass or Dashlane that can handle all this work for you behind the scenes while still keeping your sensitive data safe and sound!

Track Privileged Accounts

• Track privileged accounts
• Track accounts with elevated privileges
• Track accounts with administrative access
• Track accounts with access to sensitive data (e.g., PII)
• Track accounts with access to critical systems (e.g., core banking)
• Track accounts with access to critical infrastructure (e.g., power grids)
• Track accounts with access to company secrets (e.g., IP, R&D)

ITAM is a proactive approach to risk management, not a reactive approach.

Risk Management has become more important than ever in today’s business environment. The days of simply having someone on your team who can “fix things” when they break are over; now you need to be aware of what could go wrong and how you can avoid it before it happens. To do this effectively, you need an ITAM program that alerts you when vulnerabilities exist within your network so that they don’t turn into threats or attacks. The goal of ITAM is not only to identify potential threats but also to mitigate those risks. ITAM does this by implementing policies and procedures for each vulnerability within the system(s) being monitored.

Virima ITAM is a software security solution that helps you proactively address IT security and compliance risks, and demonstrate your compliance to regulators.

With Virima, you can:

• Reduce security risks by monitoring for vulnerabilities in your system and data
• Provide evidence of your compliance to regulators
• Reduce the risk of expensive fines or penalties

With proper knowledge about your IT assets and the information you need to protect them, you can reduce the risks in your organization.

ITAM is a way to manage the risks associated with your IT assets and information security, as well as physical security.

With proper knowledge about your IT assets and the information you need to protect them, you can reduce the risks in your organization.

In summary:

It’s important to take a proactive approach to risk management, so you can prevent problems before they happen. ITAM can help you do this by identifying risks and vulnerabilities before they become threats. It also allows your organization to identify its most important needs first, so that you can spend more time focusing on them without worrying about the costs associated with it. Finally, ITAM is essential for keeping your business running smoothly even with a low budget for technology

The IT asset management process is a powerful way to mitigate risk in the modern enterprise. By tracking and managing all of your company’s technology assets, you can ensure that your organization has the tools it needs to succeed. 

ITAM solutions like Virima can help you make sure that stakeholders securely use passwords and that any privileged accounts have appropriate access levels assigned by following best practices for password management. If you’re not already using one of these solutions, now is the time to start!

Virima ITAM helps reduce your security risks

Virima ITAM gives you the full-lifecycle hardware and software asset management you would expect, but it goes much further when paired with Virima Discovery, automated CMDB, and ViVID Service Mapping.

With Virima ITAM, you can track license entitlements against the actual number of software installs in your organization. That will help you ensure that you’re not paying for more licenses than you need or are using unlicensed software.

You can also configure your agent for more granular ITAM discovery of Windows OS settings. This will allow you to report on how much time each employee spends in different applications and how many PCs they work on during the course of their day—allowing you to reclaim under utilized licenses.

You can track actual software usage for software metering reports to reclaim under utilized licenses. You can also automatically look up warranty status so that no one is stuck with an expensive repair bill just because they didn’t know they could get replace their device under warranty. 

Find out more about Virima ITAM from our expert team. Schedule a demo and explore endless possibilities with Virima.