Why IT/Security alignment is the key to efficient operations
In far too many enterprises, IT and Security are not on the same page. This misalignment isn’t merely about departmental politics. In today’s perilous threat environment, misalignment poses a serious threat to organizational resilience and operational efficiency.
The root cause of IT/Security misalignment lies in their fundamentally different organizational mandates. CIOs focus on innovation, growth, and operational efficiency, whereas CISOs prioritize risk management and threat mitigation. This creates a natural tension, with IT teams optimizing for uptime and user productivity while security teams implement controls that protect the enterprise but may impact performance and slow progress toward launching new capabilities. Additionally, IT and security teams often rely on separate tools and data sources for asset management and vulnerability assessment, creating information silos that prevent comprehensive visibility.
“Siloed data is a significant problem that saps an organization’s potential, because they can’t make data-driven decisions,” says Karl Triebes, chief product officer at Ivanti. “Without unified data sets, organizations struggle to maintain accurate inventories of their attack surfaces, leaving critical assets unprotected and dangerous vulnerabilities unaddressed.”
The consequences of this misalignment extend far beyond IT operations. Increased security risk becomes inevitable when unpatched vulnerabilities persist due to communication gaps between the security teams that identify them and the IT teams responsible for remediation. But even when the messages get through, incident responses may be delayed — giving attackers additional time and opportunity to strike — because the sheer volume of exposures gives IT no guidance on which are the most urgent priorities.
From a compliance perspective, organizations face regulatory risk when incomplete reporting systems fail to provide auditors with comprehensive security postures. Meanwhile, resource inefficiencies drain budgets through duplicate work, manual processes, and unnecessary coordination meetings.
Most critically, these operational gaps risk significantly disrupting the business. Security incidents, system outages, and slow remediation processes are a drag on productivity, degrade the customer experience, and even harm an organization’s reputation.
Bridging the gap through intelligent integration
Aligning IT and Security first requires a cultural shift. Cybersecurity must become everyone’s responsibility rather than solely the security team’s domain. Additionally, senior leadership must align the mandates of IT and Security so that they each reduce risk while also supporting the organization’s business goals.
Integrated artificial intelligence (AI)–powered platforms serve as the technological foundation for this alignment. These solutions provide unified asset discovery, vulnerability management, and automated patch deployment, replacing the fragmented tool ecosystem that perpetuates silos. By implementing automated processes powered by AI, organizations can eliminate manual coordination steps while ensuring consistent, risk-based remediation decisions.
Enhanced visibility through shared dashboards and consolidated data sets enables both teams to work from the same operational picture. This unified view enables organizations to prioritize threats based on actual business risk rather than technical severity scores alone.
The benefits of this integrated approach include real-time visibility across the entire technology stack, accelerated-threat-response capabilities, and comprehensive automated coverage that reduces overall risk exposure. Organizations can also achieve significant operational efficiency gains through reduced manual workloads and streamlined workflows while strengthening compliance and audit readiness.
Solutions such as the Ivanti Neurons platform exemplify how integrated AI automation addresses IT/Security alignment challenges. By combining asset management, vulnerability assessment, and remediation automation in a single platform, such solutions eliminate the data silos that perpetuate team misalignment, while providing the unified visibility necessary for effective collaboration.
The path forward requires organizations to view IT/Security alignment not as an operational nice-to-have but as a strategic imperative for business resilience and competitive advantage in an increasingly complex threat landscape.
Learn how Ivanti can help your organization eliminate IT/Security misalignment.Microsoft prompts Teams AI agents to collaborate with humans – ComputerworldRead More