Intelligent CISO Issue 10 | Page 65

6. Utilising in-guest encryption to secure the data itself GARRY MCCRACKEN, VP TECHNOLOGY AT WINMAGIC In a world where IT environments are becoming increasingly virtualised and hyper-converged, the attack surface is significantly expanding. time to expand the definition of network profiling to include the riskiest asset on the network: the user. Advances in data science, combined with computing power and applied to data already collected within most organisations, can connect the dots and provide a useful profile of network user activity. While data science – i.e. Machine Learning – has become an overused buzzword, in practice it can provide very useful answers in certain applications. For example, Machine Learning can discover the connections between seemingly unrelated bits of identities to create a map of all of a user’s activities, even when the identity components are not explicitly linked. Other techniques can create baselines of normal behaviour for every user on the network, making it easier to understand whether each user is acting normally or not. Still other techniques can build better asset models, including which machines are likely ‘executive assets’ and at higher risk of attack. Profiling individual users enables an organisation to understand in great depth and with deep context exactly who is on the network; what they are doing; whether they should be doing it and what it means to an organisation’s risk and security posture. www.intelligentciso.com | Issue 10 This means securing the data itself has become a top priority. Enterprises need to take appropriate steps to ensure that sensitive data never appears in the public domain. The attack surface is significantly expanding. 7. Recognising and fulfilling skills gaps LIAM BUTLER, AVP AT SUMTOTAL, A SKILLSOFT COMPANY The cloud has brought analytics back into the hands of business users, The solution is to ensure protection resides within the data by utilising in- guest encryption with keys that remain under the control of the virtual machine (VM) owner – the enterprise itself. VM-level encryption not only protects workloads wherever they may be within the enterprise infrastructure and beyond. It also delivers a significant number of additional advantages, including making it easy for IT departments to control all aspects of data security. It ensures that data can only be accessed by authorised users, even in the event that a cloud system is breached. particularly in HR. In the ‘old days’, business analytics tools were shrouded in secrecy and owned by IT and MIS as part of the on-premise ERP system. Analytics are now part of our daily life, being used to enable insightful decision-making and to predict business outcomes. For example, the linking of workforce management data with training data allows manufacturers to predict workforce capacity planning issues in advance of a product launch, train employees prior to manufacturing demand or move shift patterns to meet demand. u 65