In 2019 our team was at dozens of trade shows and conferences around the world. While we were out in the field, we surveyed thousands of people at events like CiscoLive, InfoSec, RSA, Cyber Security Summits, and FutureCons, asking them, what is the biggest security challenge facing your organization this year?
We spoke with consultants, technology partners, resellers, integrators, and end users across all industries, with organizations of different shapes and sizes, and while the responses were extremely varied, these 10 topics kept coming up in responses.
1. Leadership buy-in to invest in defending their organizations adequately. Regardless of the size of the organization, it can be hard to get the executive team to commit to spending on cybersecurity, until it’s too late. Then your strategy is one of recovery, rather than proactive monitoring and risk mitigation.
2. Insider threats. Based on the number of employees and endpoint devices they use, if large organizations can change employee behavior towards good security hygiene, it will play an enormous role in bolstering the company’s defenses towards a breach.
3. Ransomware attacks. Hackers are now targeting SMBs and smaller organizations who either do it all in house, or rely on MSSPs and MDRs for their cybersecurity. They have a much higher success rate in getting their payouts from these smaller organizations, that are entirely dependant on using their computers to operate their business. Expect this to continue into 2020.
4. Compliance with regulations - GDPR, NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation, California Privacy Laws, HIPAA, etc. Government regulations are always changing. Making sure that your organization is in compliance with the latest regulations can be difficult for teams to manage. It involves changing not just IT and security policies, but often run over into other departments as well.
5. Zero trust strategy. Companies are starting to adopt a zero trust strategy that requires stricter identity verification for access to network resources, regardless of where you are trying to access those resources from.
6. Keeping up with changing technology. Technology is rapidly changing. It is a challenge for organizations to implement the right tools for the job with a limited budget. There are big opportunities for VARs to provide additional value to end user customers by doing a better job at staying on top of new technology and suggesting solutions that will solve the business problem, rather than just facilitating that purchase.
7. Protecting the public and private cloud. Companies need to make sure that the cloud provider they choose to use has an advanced security solution that is at least comparable, if not better than, what exists in the data center.
8. Threat management. Cyber criminals are capable of launching advanced attacks. Staying up-to-date on the latest threats to watch out for is a time-consuming endeavor. A good option for teams who are short-staffed and don’t have team members who can focus on cyber threat management is to turn to MSSPs to help alleviate some of the workload.
9. Legacy equipment and applications. We found that a lot of companies are struggling with legacy equipment that operates under a lower speed than what they need to upgrade their network to. This creates challenges from an operational and security standpoint. One solution we’ve highlighted is the use of Network TAPs and Packet Brokers to assist in bridging the gap between legacy equipment and a higher speed network, since they are capable of speed and media conversion.
10. Talent retention. Attracting and retaining top talent is a challenge all organizations are dealing with. It’s especially hard for IT teams, as the talent they need to manage new applications and security initiatives often doesn’t exist. There is a real shortage of qualified candidates coming out of universities, so some companies are looking to alternative methods of developing their own talent pool with a return to on-the-job training and development programs.
Do any of these security challenges look familiar? No matter what challenges your team is trying to overcome, Garland can help the process by providing the foundation of visibility necessary to ensure complete network security, whether it’s an on-prem data center, branch location, or in the cloud.