The number of security threats facing businesses of all sizes online is skyrocketing. Cybercrime is increasing at an alarming rate. According to a study from the University of Maryland, computers are attacked every 39 seconds, on average. For just one example that highlights how sharp the spike has been, the World Health Organisation has reported a fivefold increase in cyber-attacks this year. While there is no shortage to security solutions available to organisations, a renewed look at NetSecOps will be key for businesses to tackle the current vectors of attack that they are facing.
Budgetary issues have compounded the problem. As noted in a McKinsey report: “Many CISOs’ fiscal 2020 budgets had already been allocated before the pandemic, so to cover the cost of addressing the crisis, they had to put other projects on hold. According to our research, which covers more than 250 global CISOs and security professionals, the crisis-inspired security measures will remain top budget priorities in the third and fourth quarters of 2020.”
At a time where cyber security challenges are escalating rapidly, 70 per cent of CISOs and security buyers believe that budgets will decrease by the end of 2020. There will be a likely significant increase once the new budgets come in during 2021, but for now, the story across the spectrum of business sizes is very much about how to do more with less.
For many security professionals, this is an opportunity to place a renewed focus on NetSecOps. NetSecOps – Network Security Operations – are security operations that specifically deal with the network, in looking to automate network security testing and then incorporate that into production workflows. This area of security encompasses any automation, programmability, orchestration, virtualization, APIs and templates, and represents one of the key vectors that malicious actors look to exploit an environment.
With organisations increasingly embracing agile development, edge applications such as IoT and cloud networking as a means to resiliency and competitive advantage, NetSecOps is the piece of the puzzle that will bring security to that way of working, automating network security monitoring and incorporating robust security into operational workflows alongside configuration and provisioning.
NetSecOps will be the way that organisations can bypass the bottleneck that security is generally perceived to represent to the ability to fully leverage networks. It is the ability for NetSecOps to enable an organisation to operate productively within the heightened challenging security environment that is bringing a renewed focus and interest on NetSecOps solutions.
“If you couple actionable insights with layer 7 application response, plus network and application performance and anomaly detection, we can now provide customers with highly relevant context about applications, the network, and user behaviour – irrespective of the environment, whether on-prem, in the cloud or across multiple clouds,” Kemp Technologies’ CEO, Ray Downes, wrote in a blog.
A good NetSecOps solution should be based on machine learning-driven behaviour analysis and anomaly detection to enable early detection of even nuanced, subtle exploits. By integrating that with front-end proxy, load balancing and application firewalling, a business can deliver a tightly integrated closed feedback and remediation loop.
Building better security
Australian enterprises know that the cybersecurity challenge they face is severe, and research suggests that that they’re struggling to stay on top of it. Accenture’s Annual State of Cyber Resilience report shows that 80 per cent of Australian companies believe that their cybersecurity investments are ‘failing’, and that 70 per cent of enterprises find staying ahead of the attackers is a “constant battle” with the costs incurred in the endless battle now “spiralling out of control.” The proliferation of security solutions has meant that many organisations now have a disjointed (and thus often ineffective) security environment, with little strategy or consideration to where the greatest vulnerabilities are and how to manage the environment to focus on those.
Businesses are turning to their channel partners to help them find solutions to this challenge. “Using threat intelligence and more strategic approaches to cyber security can help Australian organisations stay protected and better equipped to respond effectively when the enemy strikes”, Joseph Failla, security lead at Accenture Australia and New Zealand, said in an interview with ARN.
“By becoming more resilient and agile, businesses will be able to grow confidently through this turbulent time.”
NetSecOps is a pathway to providing that resilience and agility, while also gaining a level of control over the spiralling costs. The machine learning helps to ease the manual monitoring of the environment, and the early detection means that the organisation can respond quickly to any breaches that might occur.
The channel’s role is in articulating to their customers that end-point security solutions cannot be the solution. The approach to security needs to be cohesive and whole-of-environment. Security needs to be tightly wound around the way that the enterprise works, and solutions need to be holistic to the entire environment. In partnership with Flowmon, Kemp Technologies is able to better assist the Australian channel in providing that comprehensive solution to their customers.
