A structured approach to Security Modernization in 4 parts
In today’s digital landscape, cybersecurity is about more than just protection—it’s about unlocking value. It’s a given that a modern cybersecurity approach shields your organization from threats, but it should also enhance efficiency, empower innovation, and support, rather than inhibit, business growth. A structured approach to cybersecurity modernization should focus on automation, identity-based security, observability, and evolving the culture and operating model. On the journey to a modern security function, each of these key waypoints increases capacity by reducing toil and streamlining processes that used to be seen as roadblocks and chokepoints on business growth. We’ll explore each of these waypoints over a few blog posts. We started with Automation. Now let’s explore Identity-Based security.
The Zero Trust journey: Starting with Identity-Based Security
In a world where threats can come from both inside and outside the enterprise, identity-based security is an essential first step to adopting a Zero Trust strategy. Gone are the days of component-based perimeter or lobster-security: hard on the outside and soft and squishy in the middle. Defining a Zero-Trust Architecture as your security goal is a “big, hairy audacious goal.” It is worthy to target as the ultimate destination. Though it will take years to fully realize it, the organization’s security posture will be improved every step along the way. There are many components of a Zero Trust approach, and the complexity of its adoption often lies in the redesign of existing security paradigms, such as sole reliance on perimeter or network-based security and the resultant replacement or reconfiguration of related tool stacks.
Identity and device trust are fundamental to the nuanced least privilege model in Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) and form two of its core building blocks. The third is micro-segmentation, extending beyond network segmentation to include environments, applications, and data classifications. As a defense-in-depth model, ZTA relies on encryption to enforce access limitations on critical data. While these components are interconnected, starting with an identity-based security model delivers the greatest security and operational value at the outset of this transformational journey.
Modernizing Identity: Benefits along the way
Organizations that modernize their identity & access lifecycle systems begin gaining greater visibility, insights and efficiency by introducing automation. Adopting a broader set of authentication options like MFA, OTP and SSO streamlines and simplifies management, while also improving user experiences: Having multiple ways to authenticate when you forget your password cuts down on support calls.
Adopting Identity Federation and deploying an IDaaS platform can enhance security by managing identities across multiple internal and external systems, streamlining identity management, improving observability, and ensuring seamless, secure access. Finally, strengthen this approach by enhancing Privileged Access Management (PAM) processes and tools to restrict access to critical systems and data.
All components enhanced in an identity-based security model establish the foundation for Zero Trust, enhancing the enterprise security posture and unlocking business value through stronger protection and risk mitigation. The automation and improved alerting created by adopting modern IGA (Identity Governance and Administration) and FIM (Federated Identity Management) tools reduce human error, limit the need for manual audits and reduce your attack surface. These modernizations also open the door to improved, continuous compliance, enable proactive threat detection and unlock User Behavior based analysis therefore enabling risk-based authentication and threat detection capabilities. A modern identity-based security paradigm provides greater flexibility and scalability to more efficiently extend your identity model and accelerate your broader hybrid multi-cloud strategy.
Unlocking Value by addressing technical debt and removing strategic drag
While I’m greatly simplifying the path to a Zero Trust paradigm, starting with an identity-based security mode will remove technical debt, reduce strategic drag, minimize toil, improve customer experience and improve the organization’s security posture.
In the end, broader business value is created through the increased operational capacity generated through the transition to an identity-based security model combined with the deeper integration of security principles into each component part. Your organization will be faster and more secure!
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