By Sachin Bhardwaj, Director Marketing & Business Development, eHosting DataFort
IT infrastructure is no longer in the sole dominion of on premise installations and are gradually moving to the cloud. With rapidly changing market needs, there is a pressing requirement among businesses to be agile.
This revolution has given rise to a never before threat that is all set to engulf most companies. Digital security is no longer a passing thought. It is one of the most important challenges facing enterprises today. In fact, Gartner has predicted after due analysis that by 2020, 60% of ventures will experience major service failures because of the inability of the IT department to secure the scope of its digital infrastructure and understand the risks that are looming on the horizon.
Digital security is proving to be a tough nut for most IT departments to crack. And there are a few key reasons for this:
- Digital threats are variable. Every day, new advancements are being made in subversive malwares and request denial techniques. The attacks and their orchestrators are evolving faster than the security technologies that can combat them.
- Digital security must keep threats at bay but should be flexible enough to support rapid scaling and growth. Thus, protection strategies and their execution should accommodate the fast pace of digital businesses. This must respond to economic and demand fluctuations faster than their traditional counterparts are required to. However, the balance is a tough one to maintain.
- Digital security paradigms must take into consideration technological diversity. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is already immensely popular. Workers access data from their mobile devices, from the secure office portals and thanks to SaaS applications, even from their home. This complicates threat management. The fluidity of access that is so critical to enhanced workplace productivity and telecommute poses challenges to infrastructure security. A wide range of devices have to be monitored and separate rules defined for access from multiple touch points.
The Process of Analyzing Digital Threats Gap and Implementing Measures
Experts believe that more than infallible security, enterprises need to focus on better response to possible threats. Thus, systems that are capable of learning and adapting are the sought after solutions of the future. A typical analysis of existing security covers the following steps:
- Scoping of the infrastructure to understand its weaknesses and vulnerabilities. This dictates the upgrades and replacements needed to strengthen the foundation of the digital business.
- Research and evaluation. Here the threat patterns for businesses in the industry are studied. Are malware installations more common or does DDoS seem to be the major challenge? If the business has suffered security breaches in the past, this data can also prove to be invaluable.
- The final step pertains to structuring a security regime. This includes hardware and software securance as well as background checks of employees. Use of strong commercially available ciphers, the purchase of security certificates and even implementation of a disaster recovery plan are common practices.
The budget allocation of digital threat management is all set to rise steeply over the coming years. Are you taking adequate care? Are you complying with geographical regulations for your data? Do you know how information is retrieved from your systems? These questions beg answers and the time to address them is now.
