However, the threat landscape is also evolving at an unprecedented pace, with cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated and finding different ways to infiltrate networks. Historically, many businesses built their networks first and later layered security on top. With an estimated 76% of organizations embracing a hybrid approach to networking, this method results in poor user experience, architectural complexity, increased risk, and difficulties with maintenance and troubleshooting.
This rapid evolution occurring within enterprises and across the threat landscape requires a modern approach to both networking and security. To achieve this, organizations have begun converging networking and security, allowing them to tie security with operations, providing secure connectivity when and where it’s needed, across their IT and OT environments. There is also a shift towards a consolidated approach to security, using technologies from only a few vendors and managing those through a small group of integrated platforms instead of implementing a collection of dozens of disparate “best of breed” products.
These shifting approaches are crucial to meet new demands as the threat landscape and organizations continue to evolve. A new era of security requires secure networking, vendor consolidation, and a focus on OT security. These concepts help organizations strike the right balance to lay the groundwork for enterprises to adopt new technologies without worrying about managing the risks associated with innovation and experimentation.
“Secure networking,” or location-, device-, content-, and application-aware networking, consists of several vital components, including next-generation firewalls (NGFW), secure software-defined wide-area network (Secure SD-WAN) technology, and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). Additionally, universal zero trust network access (ZTNA) applies the zero-trust security model to all applications. A centralized policy across all these use cases is essential, as organizations’ networks continue to expand.
Traditionally, companies have often taken a point-product approach to security, procuring “best of breed” products with their respective operating systems, management consoles, configuration requirements, and alert structures. Consolidating technology vendors and transitioning to a platform approach to manage all products helps organizations get technologies designed to work together. These technologies can more easily exchange policies, security, and threat intelligence and standardize configurations, making it easier for SOC teams to harness the power of security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) solutions.
OT devices are vulnerable to cyberattacks. While OT technology has more security features built directly into it, sweeping changes in native OT device security won’t happen overnight. Therefore, building a defensive layer around the OT components of networks is important. A layered approach is critical for securing OT devices. In addition to using NGFWs, adding capabilities such as Network Access Control (NAC), data segmentation, and micro-segmentation can enhance the security of OT devices on the network, enabling the critical transition from implicit trust to a zero trust model.
In conclusion, the complex world of cybersecurity has made secure networking, vendor consolidation, and focus on OT security essential underpinnings of any organization’s success. It is crucial to develop a modern approach to networking and security that accommodates organizational growth, practicality, and innovation while keeping security concerns in mind. As enterprises strive to improve performance and security, the convergence of networking and security, the consolidation of technology vendors across multiple platforms, and a focus on OT security continue to play an important role in organizational success.
<< photo by Mikhail Nilov >>
