In today’s security environment, budgets are tight, attack surfaces are widening, and new threats are emerging every day. Maintaining a strong security attitude in these situations without a large team or budget can be a real challenge. However, a lean security model is not only possible, but it is also extremely effective.
River Island, one of the UK’s leading fashion retailers, offers powerful case studies on how to do more in less ways. As an Infosec officer at River Island, Sunil Patel and his small team of three are responsible for securing over 200 stores, an e-commerce platform, a major distribution center and a head office. With no personnel growth on the horizon, Sunil had to rethink how security could be effectively expanded.
By adopting a lean security model with an intruder exposure management platform, teams were able to improve their vision, respond quickly to threats, and revise what is most important to them throughout their business.
Below are five important lessons from the approach that security teams can apply:
1. Automate attack surface visibility
A lean security model relies on the ability to quickly and clearly understand external attack surfaces. The River Island team had no central way to track what was exposed to the internet. With no up-to-date views of assets for the Internet, we relied on spreadsheets and manual checks, struggling to address the new risks caused by our ever-changing infrastructure.
By adopting continuous network monitoring as part of the exposure management process, teams now automatically detect changes to the offensive surface. You will be notified in real time when new or unexpected services, such as login pages, admin panels, or databases, become accessible from the Internet. This makes Sunil and his team look live and accurately at what’s exposed, making it easier to automatically scan these exposed assets for vulnerabilities.
2. Select the right tool for your job
The last thing a lean team needs is a stack of duplicate tools.
River Island had a variety of security solutions, but many were underutilized. Sunil estimates that some products “we get only about 5-6% of the possible value.”
Teams were integrated rather than added to the mix. This means that you spend less time switching contexts and more time interacting with clear, unified insights. If your toolkit is small, it’s easier to build integrations and automation, an important part of leanness.
3. Automate new threat detection
Famous vulnerabilities like Log4J put a lot of pressure on the lean team. When a critical vulnerability appears, the ability to remain safe depends on how quickly exposure can be assessed. However, due to limited resources, scrambling to do this manually is inefficient and unsustainable.
Uniform exposure management platforms like intruders can no longer remove pressure by automatically scanning for newly disclosed critical vulnerabilities and check if there is a problem without waiting for the next weekly or monthly scan.
Speaking about the impact of this, Sunil said, “When Log4J was hit, the CIO asked if we were affected. I was able to tell him right away.
This level of assurance builds trust with leadership, avoids unnecessary fire drills, and frees the team to focus on repairs rather than research.
4. Make asset owners fix problems faster
When adopting a lean security model, the goal is not to modify everything yourself. It’s about making sure the right person is equipped to quickly fix the right one. This means removing the security team as a bottleneck, allowing others to fix their weaknesses.
“One of my goals was to get the security team out of the equation completely from a process perspective,” Sunil says.
Previously, the InfoSec team was responsible for chasing after asset owners and translating technical recommendations for non-security professionals. Now, by integrating the exposure management platform with Jira, vulnerabilities are routed directly to the relevant teams.
This shift will free InfoSec with a focus on higher priorities, and service delivery managers will handle daily repairs.
Sunil said, “We’re not persistent managers anymore. We just have to monitor and make sure things are going on.”
5. Cyber hygiene report
When running a Lean Security Team, the last thing you want is to manually draw reports or tell stakeholders about updates. But vision remains important – especially at the leadership level.
At River Island, that trust was built by shifting away from ad hoc reports to automated dashboards that clearly show what was exposed, what was fixed, what was still needed to be careful about.
Sunil said, “You’re not too many with one person with me,” and he laughed, “That’s a good thing – it means nothing is broken. He doesn’t have to check in because the intruders give us confidence that we’re covering it.
Small teams, big impact
Leaning doesn’t mean you’re lacking in strength. With the right tools, processes and mindset, security teams of all sizes can build scalable, resilient and efficient operations. The River Island experience shows that it is not possible to do more with less amounts – it could be a smarter, more sustainable approach to security.
Are you under pressure to do more with less? Try the intruder for free in a 14-day trial.
