Cybersecurity’s future in the cloud
Cybersecurity is a key
concern for many as more
people work from home
during the pandemic.
Kanaiya Vasani, Executive
Vice President, Products and
Corporate Development at
Infoblox, explains how cloudbased
security services
could be the solution to many
companies’ problems.
he world is ‘social distancing’
T
as we try to halt the spread of
the novel Coronavirus, and it’s
no longer a global experiment in working
from home – it’s our new reality.
We know that the ‘normal’ world we
return to will be dramatically different
from the one we left, but the question
on everyone’s mind right now is: what
exactly will be different?
I read an article in the Wall Street Journal
that tried to forecast some of the changes
that this pandemic is accelerating in the
world of cybersecurity. In brief: it’s going
to be cloudy.
“The pivot to working from home
highlights the benefits of cloudbased
services that can quickly scale
up defences around decentralised
employees,” they wrote.
The overnight shift to near universal
work from home status has challenged
even the largest organisations.
Everything from network infrastructure
to the devices that we use for work,
to our assurances that users and
corporate data remained safe and
secure, has had to be re-thought on
the fly.
Cybersecurity in particular quickly rose
to the top of everyone’s list of concerns
as bad actors took advantage of fears
of COVID-19 for phishing campaigns
and other cyberattacks. Many turned
to VPNs in response, establishing
private connections between users and
the corporate network to encrypt and
protect sensitive data.
But, as we’ve noted before, VPNs
are only a partial solution. VPNs can
only provide security when they are
used to connect directly to a company’s
internal network.
These days, more and more companies
are using cloud-based applications
like Office365, Google Cloud and
SFDC to get work done from home.
And since many users are accessing
these applications via the
wider Internet and not
through a VPN connected
to the corporate network,
they remain vulnerable
to these cyberthreats.
Furthermore, VPNs rely on
existing on-premises security
infrastructure, which can be
difficult to scale up and may
not work as well with large
numbers of remote workers.
As the Wall Street Journal
article indicates and we at
Infoblox believe, ‘short-term
spending to keep workforces
up and running will likely
veer towards the cloud as
the economy recovers and
executives plan for a more remotefriendly
future’.
Cloud-based security services make it
easy to scale and add new users and
devices and aren’t reliant on physical
infrastructure to keep users safe. In fact,
they can often be deployed without any
new physical infrastructure at all.
Since some 90% of malware uses DNS
in some way, using a DNS security
solution that can detect malware and
other cyberthreats is one of the best
and most cost-effective ways that
companies can secure a large and
distributed workforce.
At Infoblox, we recommend that
organisations secure their employees
and enterprise assets with cloud-based
DNS security solutions that provide
a ubiquitous layer of security for
teleworking employees, no matter where
they set up their remote offices. u
Kanaiya Vasani, Executive Vice
President, Products and Corporate
Development at Infoblox
intelligent CLOUD SECURITY
www.intelligentciso.com | Issue 27
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