In today’s digital age, it’s crucial for businesses to lower their cyber risk and protect all categories of data from theft and damage. To achieve this, organisations continue to seek unified security platforms that deliver powerful threat intelligence to meet their immediate and long-term security needs.
All-in-one solutions such as next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) are attractive to organisations for their more advanced threat prevention capabilities. However, NGFW solutions are not without their challenges, often appearing more complex than first thought with tools that don’t work seamlessly together.
Such solutions fail to deal with the current threat landscape in which threats can come from myriad angles and enter the network from a growing number of endpoints and connections. The digital landscape is complex and needs a truly integrated solution to overcome key security challenges and reduce technology sprawl.
Security risks in a changing digital landscape
The traditional approach to security monitoring is no longer practical in today’s complex and ongoing digital transformation landscape, which consists of multi-cloud environments, data centres, branch offices, mobile workers, and home offices as well as the traditional corporate office.
Single security devices at the network edge can’t cope with current complex challenges. To combat this, businesses often quickly deploy a mixture of point solutions. This only intensifies the complexity and cost businesses are trying to reduce, while also creating blind spots that make security breaches harder to detect.
The more tools these businesses have, the harder it is to respond to cyberattacks and keep data and systems safe.
There are three critical concepts for an effective new security platform. An innovative approach to unifying security tools into an overarching and integrated platform is crucial. An effective security platform must be:
- Deployable from anywhere: a completely integrated cybersecurity platform must work in traditional networks, cloud environments, home offices, branch offices, retail locations, and off-network mobiles users. This will ensure a consistent connection and level of protection anywhere within the network, regardless of environment or geographical location.
- Fully integrated: an effective security solution must be designed as a fully integrated system. This means that all the security tools are built from the ground up to work seamlessly with each other as part of the same platform. These tools must be built and run on a common operating system or built using common standards to prevent costly errors and unnecessary complexity. Integration should go beyond the security elements of a platform to include networking to encourage collaboration across the network.
- Able to support automation: Automation is the best way to combat the growing threat of cyberattacks to businesses. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, automated systems can perform tasks with reduced human assistance to execute security actions in a matter of seconds. This means that the system can detect threats such as phishing, malware, and man-in-the-middle attacks straight away without depending on any external force. This kind of automation is only possible when tools work together as a unified solution.
A unified approach to security
Current security systems are no longer sufficient to protect against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks facing businesses today. Security must adapt to an ever-expanding and evolving environment. At the same time, businesses must move away from individual point solutions to a unified security platform.
That means a new security platform that can seamlessly span the entire network based on the three critical concepts: deployability; integration; and automation. Doing so will let businesses digitally transform with confidence in today’s current and future threat landscape.
To discover how Wavelink can help protect your network, users, and data with the support of the Fortinet Security Fabric, contact the sales team today: sales@wavelink.com.au
