This post was written by Cognitio and sponsored by Verisign.
So far in our quest to establish a framework for resilient cybersecurity we have talked about the importance of understanding and evaluating the threat landscape. Specifically, we highlighted the advantage of context focused threat intelligence and the value it can add to quickly and proactively detect and respond to threats. In this post we will focus on security tool selection and what organizations should consider as they design for both security and flexibility in their cybersecurity framework.
Just as the threat landscape continues to evolve, so does an organization’s business needs and goals. Deployment environments and user trends are constantly evolving, driven in large part by the constant technological innovation happening outside the organization. At any given time, there is a combination of internal and external variables that may alter the way in which cloud-based or third party services are consumed, creating the need for a flexible approach to cybersecurity in order to continually protect an ever-expanding attack surface.
According to the team at Verisign Security Services, “As companies grow they may end up implementing unique, ‘out-of-the-box’ security solutions for each new security need. Over time, this fragmented approach can result in a costly collection of redundant, proprietary or mismatched components that may not offer the scalability, performance and flexibility needed…” (see Verisign’s Framework for Resilient Cybersecurity)
Instead, a solutions-based approach that is vendor agnostic can allow an organization to remain focused on choosing best-of-breed tools that work together and avoid the drawbacks of a siloed approach. We recommend starting with a well-defined set of goals and requirements backed by well documented organizational policies. With this in place organizations can choose the appropriate tools within the context of the broader framework, rather than as an isolated component. This solutions-based approach, guided by the established goals and requirements, helps ensure that an organization can flexibly adapt its environment, adding and replacing tools as needed, to meet the evolving needs of the organization.
Key suggestions:
- Design for how you expect your environment and needs to evolve – not for what they are today
- Choose best-of-breed tools that are capable of scaling based on your needs
- Select tools that have well documented and easy to use APIs to enable interoperability and automation
Stay tuned for the next chapter in the development of a framework for resilient cybersecurity – Orchestrating Responses to Threats.
To learn more about designing for security and flexibility, read Verisign’s paper entitled, “Ensuring Application Availability and Security in the Cloud”