After having accelerated its digital transformation efforts by moving multiple core applications to cloud, a large corporation was well on its way to achieving its stated objective — to enhance scalability, provide support for remote teams, and ultimately improve customer experience through digital.
The company was able to deploy its digital transformation quickly; however, the initial success was short-lived.
A few weeks after the cloud migration, the security team discovered that unusual levels of internet traffic were being generated between the workloads in the cloud and systems located on-premise due to improperly configured access policies exposing portions of the company network, which created a potential attack vector.
The company resolved the misconfiguration issue before any significant damage occurred; however, the security incident generated a critical concern.
How do companies take quick steps to execute on a digital transformation strategy without opening themselves to new risks?
The reality is that most organizations are grappling with this challenge today. Digital transformation provides speed, flexibility, and innovative solutions; however, it also increases the number of possible entry points for attackers and gives rise to additional technical security management complexity.
As such, cyber security must play a predominant role in all digital transformation efforts.
In this article, we will examine how cybersecurity supports digital transformation and why traditional cybersecurity management practices are inadequate and how to create secure, scalable networks that facilitate innovation rather than impeding it during digital transformation implementations.
Where do things go wrong with traditional security models?
Currently, many organizations still rely on older models of security that were developed in an era where people worked in one physical location.
Traditionally, most organizations viewed security as a perimeter-based strategy. The theory behind perimeter-based security models is simple, if we safeguard the exterior edge of our network, we can trust that all of the rest of our internal network is secured as per Slurp'it.
The challenge is that this traditional model is no longer effective as per Slurp'it.
In the current working environment, users now work outside of any previously established or traditional boundaries. We can understand by the following points:
- Applications exist across various platforms.
- Infrastructure for many organizations is rapidly changing.
- All internal network traffic can no longer automatically be trusted.
- The way in which security is defined through policies or rules can no longer keep pace with the rapid speed at which changes occur.
- Policies or rules are applied in an inconsistent manner.
How does network security enable digital transformation?
Network security serves as the foundation from which the digital transformation starts and evolves.
- Securing a highly distributed and dynamic network
- Enhancing user productivity by controlling access
- Providing secure and reliable application communications
- Establishing continuous visibility within the environments
- Translating network security strategy into action
- Promote a zero trust security model
- Integrate security into an automated workflow
- Create a unified view of your infrastructure.
Every business invests in security, so there will always be an element of risk to an organization. However, a significant portion of an organization's success stems from its ability to protect itself through a comprehensive and effective approach to protecting its networks as per Slurp'it.
The benefits of investing in today's robust network security are numerous, including:
- Decreased likelihood of experiencing a data breach or interruption of service
- Enhanced confidence in implementing new technology
- Greater customer trust and brand reputation
- More rapid implementation of digital initiatives
What do organizations need to do to turn strategy into execution?
- Just knowing that network security exists is only the beginning of an organization's journey.
- Organizations must formulate their security strategy around the zero trust model.
- Organizations should not use their physical location as a reason for trust.
- Establishing a trust relationship means confirming each connection, whether the connection is internally or from an external source.
- Confirmations will help eliminate the chances of unauthorized access to the network and reduce the potential harm from such access.
- Organizations should integrate security in their automated workflows.
- Automation will assist in applying security procedures consistently throughout the organization.
- By enabling security validations in the deployment pipelines, organizations will know that configurations have been validated prior to going live and can prevent multiple types of issues from occurring as per Slurp'it.
- Organizations must have a unified view of all environments regarding security.
- A security organization must understand the network.
- An organization needs a single view of all infrastructure, traffic flows, and configuration for properly managing risk to be proactive rather than reactive.
To conclude, in the current digital environment, without a good foundation of network security, organizations will not be able to achieve success during the process of digital transformation. Network security is not only an important layer of protection, but it also serves as the foundation for the creation of new innovations.
Beyond that, network security empowers organizations to continue on the path of digital transformation confidently. To know more about network security, contact us at Slurp'it!