Continuous Monitoring (CM) as the ability to maintain ongoing awareness of information security, vulnerabilities, and threats to facilitate risk-based decision making. The ultimate objective of CM is to determine if the security and privacy controls implemented by an organization continue to be effective over time considering the inevitable changes that occur in the environment in which the organization operates.

Continuous Monitoring removes the limitations of manual or one-time assessments and facilitates real-time risk management through automating monitoring processes. CM benefits businesses in many ways by providing visibility into undiscovered system components, misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and unauthorized changes, which can potentially expose organizations to increased risk if not addressed.

Discover why continuous monitoring is important, the implementation considerations and the benefits in the full article .