This is why you should stop throwing security products at the problem

By Ignus De Villiers, Security Lead at Nexio

14 Sep 2020, 06:34 by Nexio

Cyber security was already an enormous and growing task for organisations prior to the lockdown that drove so many people to work from home.

Now it’s even more critical. We must defend better and respond faster with solutions that integrate responses to threat vectors from the Internet to e-mail and a sea of endpoints.

Assuming that cloud solutions secure us because they have security measures in place is also a huge misnomer. They may be secured but our data moving to and from them doesn’t necessarily fall under their umbrella.

Bolting on additional security products into our environments that are now more exposed and much broader due to working from home during lockdown is not the answer. In fact, it’s expensive and most likely counterproductive as well as being ineffective.

Complexity breeds risk. Having to manage a lot of security applications makes it easier for security administrators to miss an update or a setting change. It’s a routine occurrence even on heavily used office productivity applications in the cloud. Imagine the likelihood for a seldom seen IOT system running deep in the field.

Point solutions also only address individual threat vectors so they’re inefficient. And they often don’t integrate well with one another or work well with the IT solutions our businesspeople use regularly, such as Office 365, SharePoint and others.

Additionally, the nicely defined edge of the traditional network is a distant memory. We can’t hide everything behind a powerful firewall and be done with it. We have to include the cloud. We must include branch offices, other operational sites, and edge and endpoint devices like smartphones, tablets and laptops – increasingly even the wearables that connect to them. The number of paths onto the network are numerous. Our security people are trying to protect us from a vastly bigger number of threats than ever before that are coming at us from every direction – even inside the network.

Our overburdened security personnel don’t need more products. They need smarter, more integrated solutions that play nicely with our business systems and applications and help improve accessibility for our employees. Tight integration with common business applications means we lock down the widest exposure across the business and simultaneously improve accessibility so we’re productive and efficient.

Integrated security that covers all the bases through a single platform with advanced intelligence that unites the threat information they elicit into more automated responses helps ease the burden. It also helps us respond a lot faster. That’s what Cisco does. And it integrates your existing environment, so you don’t lose your ROI even while you improve the TCO.

What we need is integrated and advanced malware protection, cloud, e-mail, and endpoint security, network visibility and segmentation so we can see what’s happening on the network, including the IOT environment, and lock down bad actors. We need next-gen firewalls and intrusion prevention, secured routers and VPN clients, and protected Web links. We need a zero-trust security but more accessibility for our applications, services, business and data systems. We need smart ransomware solutions, secured WANs and data centres.

We need it all as part of an integrated whole if we are to be wholly secured. Contact me for a free security assessment to help see you through this difficult period when everyone’s trying to adjust. It’s peace of mind without any upfront investment. Talk to me today to get less complexity and the likelihood of more network security by enabling or complementing the current features of your Cisco portfolio.