Traditional networking models are no longer sufficient as the world moves towards remote work and cloud adoption. Moreover, new threats are leveraging interconnectedness to attack networks from many locations.
A modern approach incorporating security and access management is required to combat the growing threat landscape. A CASB, SASE, or SD-WAN solution can help.
Protection from Cyber Threats
Many companies have rapidly implemented cloud solutions to accommodate remote work, accelerate digital transformation, and more. However, these hasty deployments have created new attack surfaces that threaten the integrity of data transfers and compliance requirements. Adding a zero-trust security service edge to your network effectively prevents these threats and minimizes risk.
The threat landscape constantly changes, making it challenging for security teams to keep up. For example, attackers are now breaking their malware into pieces to evade firewall detection and make lateral movements within the network. Moreover, more traffic is now encrypted, which requires special tools to decrypt and inspect for malicious activity.
A cloud-delivered security solution like the secure web gateway addresses these challenges by combining multiple technologies with defined processes and automation. For instance, a next-generation SIEM or EDR solution unifies alert data from across the enterprise and applies powerful AI to detect anomalies and highlight potential threats. These solutions enable faster response times through pre-packaged threat-specific content and integrations with hundreds of third-party tools. Additionally, a managed endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution can help to detect polymorphic attacks, fileless malware, and zero-day threats.
Scalability
A cloud-delivered security solution is usually sold on a subscription basis, allowing your organization to scale protection up and down as needed. The cost is also based on usage rather than hardware purchases, which saves you money. This scalability is essential as it allows you to meet your regulatory requirements for data management.
Cloud-based security solutions are constantly updated to match new threats, which is vital because cyber threats evolve. Using a managed security service provider (MSSP) as part of a comprehensive cloud-delivered platform ensures your organization is always protected.
Security should work for you, not the other way around, and a good solution is designed to integrate multiple capabilities into one platform to simplify securing your organization. With attacks increasingly breaking malware into small pieces missed by firewalls and re-assembling them once inside your network, having a full security stack that works in concert can help you protect against these emerging threat trends. In addition, with more traffic than ever being encrypted, it is essential to have a security gateway to inspect this traffic for malicious activity.
Reliability
The centralized nature of cloud security solutions allows them to provide a higher level of monitoring and protection across a broader set of systems, applications, and data than legacy IT models. This is the key to reducing complexity, administrative effort, and gaps threat actors exploit.
Unlike traditional firewalls, a cloud-delivered security solution provides complete network visibility that is always current and can detect anomalies in real-time. This enables the detection of unknown threats, near-real-time forensics, and a faster response to caught attacks.
Additionally, a cloud-delivered security platform is designed to work with other components like SD-WAN to direct traffic to the cloud-based security solution for inspection. This is important because attackers are becoming adept at avoiding firewalls and finding ways to slip malware into networks through several methods, including disguising malware files as regular traffic or encrypting data.
Flexibility
As companies embrace the cloud and its elasticity, cybersecurity solutions must also be agile. This requires cloud-native tools that support multiple environments and a seamless end-user experience. In addition, a flexible platform that can intercept traffic and analyze threats in real-time is essential.
The market offers many cloud-based security solutions with a wide range of functional scope, platform coverage, and operational complexity. To help IT teams evaluate and compare these offerings, KuppingerCole has developed a new Cloud Security Evaluation Framework.
For example, organizations should look for a solution that can offer a single agent to protect users on all their devices (including mobile) across all their networks. This can reduce complexity and help them avoid tool overload, alert fatigue, and a lack of automation. In addition, they should consider the potential impact on data residency and compliance requirements when selecting a solution. This can be addressed by working with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) or a vendor that offers Fusion SIEM and XDR as part of its cloud-delivered security portfolio.
Automation
Attackers use various techniques to slip into undetected networks in the modern threat landscape. They are adept at deploying multiple malware variants that attack from different angles. They mask their activity using multi-routing, covert scripts, traffic flooding, and protocol impersonation.
To defend against these sophisticated attacks, organizations need to monitor the constantly-evolving cyber threat landscape. A security platform that comprehensively views your network’s attack surface allows you to anticipate vulnerabilities and implement countermeasures to minimize a breach’s impact.
When evaluating the right solution for your organization, consider how it will fit your existing tools and technologies. Ideally, it should be easy to integrate and provide clear and actionable intelligence you can deliver to your security team members. It also needs to scale up and down based on your needs. This scalability is one of the primary advantages of a cloud-delivered security solution. It allows you to secure at scale and protect everything across your entire digital ecosystem.