HACKERS CAN’T ATTACK
WHAT THEY CAN’T SEE,
SO WHY MAKE BUSINESS
CRITICAL ASSETS VISIBLE?
With cybercrime on the rise, global enterprises and organisations
face the constant challenge of keeping the ‘bad guys’ out. Oliver
Cantor, Associate Director of Product Strategy at Verizon, argues
that CISOs should look to a software-defined perimeter (SDP)
solution which leverages a ‘non-discoverability’ approach to
enable secure access to devices and applications.
T
he biggest
security
challenge facing
organisations
today is stopping
the major
cyberattacks,
DDoS, financial theft, ransomware and
connection hijacking to name just a
few from infiltrating their businesses.
Cybercriminals want to access critical
applications and steal hot ticket items
such as propriety research, secret
recipes, prototypes and confidential
personal data to either extort money or
even just to create havoc.
Cybercrime is not a problem that
is going away anytime soon, in fact
our 2018 Data Breach Investigations
Report highlighted the increased use of
ransomware, which doubled compared
to last year. Cybercrime is clearly a
problem to be confronted head on and
to be prepared for in the digital age.
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Business has changed and digital
technology has opened up more
opportunities for greater collaboration
and productivity than ever before.
Employees can have access to critical
business information and systems
remotely 24/7; partners and suppliers can
collaborate on propriety projects from
anywhere in the world and customers
have the anytime, anyplace connectivity
with their preferred brands via mobile
and online applications. The world has
never been so connected and businesses
so agile, however this new convenience
has exposed security weaknesses;
weaknesses that cybercriminals are only
too happy to exploit.
How has the digital age
changed security?
Historically, enterprises deployed a
traditional ‘physical’ perimeter security
solution to protect against external
threats to their critical applications.
Oliver Cantor - Associate Director of Product
Strategy at Verizon
However, advances in digital
technology – such as mobile devices
and applications – have significantly
stretched these traditional boundaries
moving them to breaking point. In
order to provide more capacity and
flexibility to utilise digital advances, most
organisations have now entered into the
virtual environment, placing business
critical systems in the public cloud for
easier access, way beyond their well-
defined physical boundaries.
Often businesses are unaware that
traditional Internet protocols have
inadequate security to protect these
virtual environments, as they were not
designed to do so. Many have between
20 to 100 individual security solutions in
place already and the prospect of new
security solutions to combat cybercrime
is often too overwhelming to even be
considered. Organisations are simply
burying their heads in the sand until the
inevitable cyberattack occurs – but by
Issue 04
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