What’s Your Security Blind Spot Costing You?

The use of network encryption is rising at least 20% per year[1], according to analysts. As the use of encrypted traffic goes up, so does risk. Gartner says more than 50% of all threats will use SSL/TLS by 2017[2] – that’s next year!

But what is the actual financial impact of this SSL/TLS blind spot? What exactly is it costing you, not just in hard dollars but also in terms of degradation of your previous investments in security technology?

Blue Coat has devised a quick and easy way to find out.

It’s an interactive tool that calculates both your annual security blind spot cost and the loss of value in your network security infrastructure investment such as next-generation firewalls (NGFWs), intrusion detection and prevention solutions (IDS/IPS), sandboxing, web proxies, data loss prevention (DLP) solutions and so on. You can try it right here.

Why does the value of your security infrastructure diminish? Because an overwhelming number of these devices do not see and process encrypted network traffic—they simply ignore it. In many cases they simply aren’t capable of decryption, but all too often they don’t because doing so bogs down device and network performance. In either case they’re worth less as a function of NOT seeing and processing SSL/TLS traffic.

The calculation itself is based on this (admittedly oversimplified) concept: The cost of your network security blind spot is the percentage of SSL/TLS traffic coursing through your networks times the overall investments you’ve previously made in the security solutions listed above.

NETWORK SECURITY BLIND-SPOT COST =

% of SSL Traffic * Annual Investment into Network Security Products

Go ahead and give it a try—it only takes a minute and the simple result is surprisingly accurate. Then think twice about what the lack of an effective SSL visibility and management solution is costing you—not just in dollars, not just in lower investment value, but in terms of missed opportunities. Because every cent you waste on a poor solution is money that could have been invested in creating new business advantages, exploring opportunities, and adding value for customers.

[1] 6 J. W. Pirc, "SSL Performance Problems: Significant SSL Performance Loss Leaves Much Room for Improvement," NSS Labs, June 2013.

[2] Gartner, Security Leaders Must Address Threats from Rising SSL Traffic, Jeremy D’Hoinne and Adam Hills. Published: 9 December 2013