Technical Debt: An Enterprise's Self-Inflicted Cyber Risk
SC Media, Friday, November 8th, 2024
Technical debt has become the foremost self-imposed cyber threat within enterprises. But what are we talking about? Why does it happen? And, how can enterprises ensure that obsolete hardware and unattended software aren't inadvertently leaving the network open to risk?
McKinsey defines technical debt as the 'tax' a company pays on any development to redress existing technology issues. And it's not cheap. The consulting firm's research found that technical debt accounts for about 40% of IT balance sheets - and that companies pay an additional 10% to 20% on top of a project's cost to address it.
Think of technical debt as the latent issues in the network that can become significant risks if an enterprise network gets attacked or network configurations change.