In a Competitive World, Cybersecurity Must Be an Enabler, Not a Roadblock
Technologies like digitization and cloud computing are driving change across virtually all industries. Successful companies are using growing stores of digitalized data to deliver products and services faster and more reliably than their competitors. The cloud is helping workers store and share that data more efficiently and effectively. It’s a sink or swim proposition – you can either modernize your operations or drown as rivals pass you by.
Gartner SASE: ‘The Future of Network Security is in the Cloud’
Lea el reporteRather than putting up roadblocks to these changes, cybersecurity must find ways to enable this modernization of data operations while still effectively safeguarding data, people and systems.
Keeping up with the pace of innovation isn’t an easy task for the cybersecurity teams entrusted with protecting companies from external and internal threats. Even as organizations take advantage of the explosion of data shared across geographies, they must be even more vigilant about protecting it against theft and loss. Private clouds require new security strategies and tactics, while using public cloud apps and services means handing over a portion of your security responsibilities—and visibility—to a third party.
The future will bring even bigger and more complex challenges for cybersecurity. The worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow to $266.4 billion in 2020 for a 17% year-over-year increase, according to Gartner. By 2022, it’s projected to be a $354.6 billion market. Cloud application services or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) represent the office productivity, collaboration and CRM apps almost all organizations use. SaaS is set to remain the biggest segment of the public cloud market and is projected to grow from $99.5 billion in 2019 to $151.1 billion in 2022.
The main mission of cybersecurity in the coming years will be to help organizations leverage the power of big data and the cloud to achieve big goals, while maintaining safe environments for their people to innovate.
Smarts and Flexibility Beat Brawn and Rigidity
So how can cybersecurity be an enabler instead of a roadblock? By using proactive, adaptive, decentralized tools that are designed for this brave new cloud-flowing, digitized world instead of for yesterday’s paradigm of rigid, reactive, threat-centric security.
One area where innovative security solutions are being developed is in Dynamic Edge Protection (DEP), which combines advanced network, cloud and data security. DEP is built on the principles of SASE, short for Secure Access Service Edge. SASE is an emerging security and networking architecture model for the enterprise that brings together technologies like firewall protection, cloud security and DLP. It is being developed as a means for converging networking and network security capabilities into a unified, global, cloud-native service for enterprises to safely connect people and offices all over the world.
DEP solutions let organizations do things like expand their cloud operations securely and connect new branch offices to networks more quickly and inexpensively. As this technology matures further, it will have an accelerated transformational impact across multiple IT domains, integrating current standalone solutions for firewalls, data protection, and cloud access into a converged architecture.
Data Loss Prevention is another exciting area of development. Businesses are under enormous pressure to safeguard sensitive data against breaches which can do big monetary and reputational damage. At the same time, companies that want to be competitive are doing things like replacing paper with digitized records, moving IT operations to the cloud to eliminate unused or wasted computing capacity, and enabling flexible, home working arrangements for employees.
Such initiatives come with security challenges that are becoming too difficult to take on with traditional DLP tools. Today’s cutting-edge, integrated Dynamic Data Protection (DDP) solutions expand and deepen cybersecurity perimeters by leveraging advanced technologies such as behavioral-based analysis of user and system threat potential, as well as forensics which can provide lessons from past data breaches to prevent future ones. Because these technologies focus on behavioral anomalies rather than draconian measures that lock down data, they allow remote workforces to collaborate and share digital assets more productively, sustainably, and with less friction over the cloud, all while maintaining the highest levels of protection against external and internal security threats.
A Modern Approach to Security is a Human-Centric Approach
In a competitive, flexible, work-from-anywhere world, organizations can no longer accept cybersecurity solutions that put safety above success. They require a modern approach to security that enables collaboration and innovation, while safeguarding the data and tools their people use to collaborate and innovate. In placing people and data at the center of their security strategies, enterprises can protect their digital economy journeys for long-term business success.