Manny Rivelo is the CEO of Forcepoint.
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Several weeks ago, I presented a keynote at the RSA conference, where I explained why I was the biggest threat to my company.
Each day, I wake up at 5 a.m. and immediately start consuming information. Reading the news. Catching up on email. Watching my kids’ latest Tik Tok videos. Downloading sales reports. Paying bills. I go from phone to corporate laptop and then to tablet while at the gym, stopping at Starbucks, working from home or heading into the office before driving to the airport, all the while switching devices seamlessly like a fish moving through water.
Every time I use a personal or my corporate device, I’m opening up a potential door for hackers. They, too, are spotting opportunities to use technological advances to move faster and execute ever more resourceful and diabolical attacks thousands of times before I’m even a couple of hours into my day.
We can’t continue with this as the only reality. We must fix this—and we need to start moving faster than the attackers. So, where to begin?
Start with a zero-trust foundation.
“Never trust, always verify” should become the guiding principle throughout your organization. From individual contributors to managers to executives and boards, we must all look for ways to adopt zero-trust tenets and make them easier to adopt. This includes the security posture.
Build on SASE frameworks for convergence.
Security vendors rarely agree, but we’re reaching a critical mass where Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is becoming the model everyone aspires to. Well, I say that with an asterisk on the statement. Many vendors have tried to get by with a wide definition of what makes up SASE. Some companies piece together multiple networking and security products and label everything “SASE.” However, SASE isn’t simply a collection or bundle of things.
I’ve always held to the notion that simpler is better. Simple doesn’t mean a generic one-size-fits-all set of capabilities. Instead, it’s controlling access continuously (remember, zero trust) for accessing and sharing data through email, web, cloud apps and private apps—with built-in threat protection and data security. When we put management in the cloud, security can be everywhere, which is table stakes for today’s increasingly hybrid, remote workforces. This also ensures data can be inspected and threats can be stopped before bad things happen.
Have a 'smart edge.'
For years, working in remote branch offices has been a struggle of the “haves” and “have-nots.” Everyone at headquarters had resources and IT staff to rely on. Workers out on the edge of the enterprise often did not, and the refrain, “What corporate security doesn’t know won’t hurt them," was frequently heard.
Today, we must equip the enterprise with a “smart edge.” We must push security services out to the edge using modern secure SD-WAN technology so we gain more visibility and control over applications. Make it easier for people working remotely or in branches to connect to internal systems and cloud apps. This includes making better use of broadband links to the internet. You can cut costs and give yourself more flexibility by combining less-expensive local ISPs with existing, traditional MPLS lines you might already invest in.
Also key here is improving the user experience by not forcing your people to route internet traffic back through HQ. That makes no sense. Instead, put agents on corporate, unmanaged and BYOD devices to make important decisions on what employee behavior is allowed or unauthorized. For all other security measures, use proxy connections in the cloud. Security then appears to the naked eye as instant, invisible and hands-free, even while security teams stay firmly in control.
With this modern architecture, we can move more easily from implicit security to explicit zero trust, like cutting through water. It's how we stay productive and create a better experience for our people. With the infrastructure all in the cloud, we can focus on speed and innovation, not monthly patches. We can reduce management headaches with one tool to manage instead of many. Along the way, we can also cut costs.
Seems straightforward, doesn’t it? It is the path we must take to simplify or get left behind.
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