Cyber security is a complex animal that is only growing more complicated. From the increasing frequency of attacks to the expanding threat landscape with cloud migration and remote work, security policies struggle to keep up. Many are pursuing zero trust strategies as a way to better protect their data and systems.
The pace of changing technology has had a significant impact on security policy, with what used to be a perimeter-based set of strategies forced to acknowledge that the perimeter no longer exists. This trend accelerated at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, taking what had been a subtle shift by some industries towards remote work and making it a near-universal work environment.
The traditional perimeter-focused cyber security policy no longer applies in a cloud-focused technology setting because users, data, and applications are everywhere.
IT has entered an era in which an elastic perimeter is the reality; protection must exist wherever resources are being accessed. The blanket answer is Zero Trust but implementing it across an organization takes a coordinated effort. Preventing intrusion, limiting lateral movement and protecting data are balanced by the need to keep business priorities intact.
Hybrid Offers Answers: For many companies, the best path to a solid security policy is a hybrid solution that uses both on-site data center elements like virtual private networks (VPNs) and firewalls and new cloud-based technologies to achieve zero trust. It will also involve secure access service edge (SASE) solutions that place the focus of the policy on the user or device instead of the data center.
Using multiple products from a variety of providers adds to the complexity of a security policy, fragmenting it and making it challenging to achieve consistency. It also creates obstacles in terms of gaining insights for improving security across so many solutions and providers.
Here are a few suggestions for combining the on-site cyber security solutions you already have in place with new, best-in-class, cloud-based offerings:
· Reduce fragmented policies across multi-provider security strategies. It’s important to identify and enforce a consistent set of policies across all security solutions. This requires a single paradigm that is abstracted to foster uniform approaches and enables a policy-based response to threats.
· Apply signal ingestion to threat detection and response. It’s crucial that your organization have a way to collect and analyze threat signals to mitigate cyber security threats. A common edge platform can bring together a variety of types of signals to inform your security team and allow them to respond rapidly.
· Take steps to minimize the attack surface. Instead of users connecting to the application, you need to enable the application to connect to users. This Zero Trust technique keeps applications and data invisible to attackers while allowing users to access the resources they need according to a least privilege access policy.
· Implement micro-segmentation. Put east-west network segmentation policy into place so that any malware that makes it into your system is not allowed to reproduce and invade laterally across your organization.
· Put security intelligence closer to the user. This requires embracing an elastic perimeter that elevates performance priorities and removes latency issues, but also efficiently collects and analyzes potential threats.
Pursuing zero trust initiatives for your company’s cyber security policy is a significant step toward a secure environment, but applying it across your organization is a big undertaking. A step-by-step approach offers immediate benefits while moving you closer to your goal. Contact us at ITBroker.com to learn more about leveraging the right solutions for a more secure environment.
