The Cyber Security Paradigm Is Changing

In the last decade the world has seen a significant increase in cyber attacks around the world, as the level of sophistication of cyber criminals has progressed in tandem with that of Moore’s law and the threats that they pose to organisations is no longer random in nature. Whether responding to a natural disaster, defending against a cyber attack, or meeting the unprecedented demands to enable the largest workforce in history to work remotely, we will amplify our human capacity through technology. 

There have been many changes over the last decade, notably including business, technology and the increasing need for effective cyber security. In this changing landscape, a shift must take place to adequately combat the challenge. The old approach has failed many organisations and cost the world billions of dollars. 

The traditional approach to cyber security with hard security boundaries is being undermined by the ever-increasing pressure for flexibility and agility of operations, combined with some IT developments. As more organisations are adopting a hybrid working model, the way we deal with cyber security has to evolve and change.

Cyber security teams are coming under intense pressure, finding themselves in an increasingly complex situation. The adoption of the cyber security has been accelerated by several drivers, including digital initiatives and the opportunity to take advantage of IoT, AI, advanced analytics and the cloud. 

As organisations deploy new technology solutions and look to scale them, cyber security becomes a growing problem. In order to tackle this issue, businesses will often look towards the cloud for a solution. While cloud presents a solution, it requires a paradigm shift in how businesses approach security. Cloud security operations are built for speed, scale, interoperability, automation, and collaboration. 

These drivers, along with the demand for increased flexibility, reliability and agility, have led more and more businesses to adopt a cyber security mesh. This distributed cyber security approach offers a much-needed chance for increased reliability, flexibility and scalability. Specifically, a cyber security mesh involves designing and implementing an IT security infrastructure that does not focus on building a single 'perimeter' around all devices or nodes of an IT network, but instead establishes smaller, individual perimeters around each access point.

Ultimately, the continued breakdown of the traditional technology stack with elevated virtualisation of services means the way organisations look to protect themselves is set for an upgrade. That means adopting new tools like a cyber security mesh that will enable organisations to successfully do this, as raw information sits at its heart, meaning informed decisions can be made with an unparalleled agility level.

Having to shift your cyber security plans and structures continuously can seem daunting. However, with greater control and level of agility, the cyber security mesh makes this a much less terrifying prospect. The cyber security mesh allows data and compute to move around in an agile way in smaller, more manageable chunks and controls them by providing key trust services. This, in turn, allows greater control through things likes asset verification and validation, cryptographic services and even authorisation rights, so deployed federated assets are secured through policy in diverse deployed environments.

It is this exact combination of flexibility and control that you are unable to find with other methods, allowing your vital assets to be secured through a robust policy regardless of environment.

The ability to combat cyber risk effectively is especially important for a country like Singapore, as it is one of the most networked and electronically connected societies in the world. Singapore’s success singles it out to experience an increased level of threats as it progresses towards its ambitions of being a SMART Nation. Today, business runs off of data and organisations are directed by information and they actively encourage customers, clients and employees to share data to use and to share.

Data is the lifeblood of enterprise, and our ability to access information on demand in our personal lives has impacted the way we expect data to be used and managed in our professional lives. The value of data and the value of protecting data, being able to keep this information private and secure will set businesses apart from one another, strengthening services and products as whole. 

With data sitting at the heart of a business’s structure, your cyber security models need to encircle it to protect it from all angles. As such, there is a growing move towards a policy-centric model, which in and of itself will have an impact on organisational structure.  The need for greater flexibility and agility will also enable increased use of automation, which will allow for responses to crisis to be flagged and dealt with more swiftly than before.

The cyber security mesh will be a key trend in 2021, as it provides necessary benefits which traditional cyber security methods simply can’t, including agility, flexibility, adaptability and reliability. 

A cyber security mesh can establish a more robust, flexible and modular approach to network security. By ensuring that each node has its own perimeter, IT network managers much better able maintain and keep track of differentiated levels of access to different parts of a given network, and to prevent hackers from exploiting a given node’s weakness in order to access the broader network.

There needs to be a shift in management strategy. Instead of the tried-and-tired approach of doing more with less, companies now need to shift their focus to determining how to do more with the same effectiveness. This transition has profound implications. No longer does technology just support business value and it is becoming clear that technology shapes business value, making technology an integral part of the value equation. 

Microsoft:    Deloitte:    Forrester:    ITPro Portal:    Information Age:    ZDNet:    

Bocasay:     Stefanini:   Image: Unsplash

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