editor’s question
DR ALEKSANDAR
VALJAREVIC,
HEAD OF
SOLUTIONS
ARCHITECTURE,
HELP AG
I
t is typically the
scale and nature
of business of
organisations
that determines
whether they have
a genuine need
and/or capability to establish dedicated
cybersecurity teams.
Today, it is mainly the largest
of organisations with pressing
cybersecurity needs – such as large
banks and government entities – that
are making this investment. For the
majority of businesses however, it
makes more sense to focus on setting
up the right information security
governance and working with the right
partners on the selection, deployment
and operation of cybersecurity
solutions and specialised services.
There are clear benefits to engaging with
qualified external partners – for one,
today, every second vendor claims to
have an end-to-end cybersecurity
30
platform. In reality,
these vendors tend to
excel in certain
technology areas and fall
short in others. Finding the
right balance between the
security platform approach and best
of breed point solutions is the key. It is
here where the expertise of external
partners is needed to identify the right
mix of technologies and implement and
configure them in an optimised manner,
so that the organisation can have
effective protection.
Organisations looking to address their
cybersecurity skills gap can greatly
benefit from the services model. This
addresses the above-mentioned
challenge of selecting and integrating
the best point products as with
services, it is the SLAs and technical
proficiency of the provider that take
precedence over the technologies
themselves (although underlying
technology is of course still an
important aspect).
Clients therefore no longer have to
worry about the solutions that are
deployed and can instead focus on
Finding the right
balance between
the security platform
approach and best
of breed point
solutions is the key.
In five years from
now, security will
mainly be delivered
as a service.
identifying and engaging with the right
service providers.
The future of cybersecurity therefore will
be services-led. In five years from now,
security will mainly be delivered as a
service. While there is a definite market
inclination towards the services model,
organisations must still maintain a basic
level of internal technical expertise.
This is important to not only ensure
better engagements and management of
SLAs with external partners, but also to
enable smooth internal operations, such
as bridging the divide between GRC
(Governance, Risk and Compliance) and
cybersecurity teams.
Finally, no cybersecurity strategy would
be complete without an organisation-
wide awareness programme. Humans
remain the weakest link in the
information security chain which is
why we see cybercriminals focusing so
heavily on social engineering and other
attacks which exploit human behaviour.
Modern awareness programmes must
not only focus on training, but also
testing such that user actions are fed
back into the security controls. So, for
example, if a user clicks a malicious link,
a new set of policies and permission
must be applied to prevent the
reoccurrence of such a threat. u
Issue 23
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