Thinking Beyond Cloud Security
A few years ago, most businesses would have been right to wonder whether their digital work processes would ever be as easy to use as Facebook. But cloud technology has come a long way in a short time.
Cloud services are transforming internal business workloads and processes of countless companies and whole industries like retail, transportation, and even manufacturing. Organizations are able to choose among a variety of intuitive, cloud-based services to find the best fit.
The shared, on-demand nature of cloud computing also means that enterprises need to plan for a host of new security challenges. Fortunately, Symantec and other companies can help with products such as ProxySG, "ProxySG-as-a-Service" in the Cloud (officially known as Web Security Service, (or WSS), Cloud Access Security Brokers, and the single-sign-on features of our own Validation & Identity Protection service Access Manager.
However, we're always reaching for more. That's why the Research Lab continued tackling new challenges like insider threat detection, micro-segmentation, and micro-services, all from the perspective of the cloud.
Indeed, going back over a decade, we did some of the earliest work in the industry on constructs like “containers.” More recently, we published on “Security-as-a-Service for Microservices-Based Cloud Applications,” to guide administrators as they implemented permission controls around the “principle of least privilege” policy enforcement for containers.
The Research Lab has also applied machine learning to protect cloud-based services and combat insider threats. In fact, our first trial deployment, working with a company employing more than ten thousand cloud users, helped catch real insiders who were abusing the system.
A Personal Kind of Cloud Security
However, when I mull the future of security and the cloud, I see even bigger potential. Think about security delivered “from the cloud” as an always-on service, protecting users everywhere they go.
Let me offer an analogy.
The Internet surrounds us nearly everywhere we go. We’ve come to expect wireless and constant connections, anywhere, anytime. In similar fashion, security should envelop us wherever we go.
I like to envision it as an invisible body of armor, one that moves with us like a summer shirt, but more bulletproof than Kevlar, titanium or carbon fiber all combined.
Personal VPNs offer a bit of the “always on” protection that I’m describing. They ensure that computing devices are always connected to a safe data center, protected by a strongly encrypted pipe that lets you securely transmit communications, protected against any eavesdroppers who might be lurking.
That’s just a first step. With so many websites getting hacked, how can even you be sure that the websites you visit aren’t attacking you “through” that pipe? That’s where cloud-based services like WSS and Fireglass help.
Such services can detect and block such attacks in real-time, including some never seen before.
Given the countless mobile devices now part of the growing Internet of Things are truly “cloud-driven” things, building such powerful and flexible security into mobile devices is a crucial step. That’s why Symantec Labs was eager to help Symantec become among the first to leverage the ARM TrustZone technology that’s now built into billions of mobile devices.
It also explains why we’re still helping drive new standards for such authentication, safely and securely connecting people to their information in the cloud, perhaps even finally killing passwords in the process.
What’s more, it’s also part of the reason we are so excited about our more recent acquisition of Skycure, which makes a predictive threat detection platform for mobile devices.
This is an idea that can’t come to fruition fast enough. Consider, for example, the practice of merchants and ad-networks invading our privacy to profile everyone.
Meanwhile, some governments are going so far as to attack our smartphones to gather information about the political leanings of their citizenry and unmask the anonymity of dissidents protesting against repressive regimes.
If ever there was a time we could use the powerful and flexible armor that I’m talking about, it’s now. Both for individuals as well as for organizations. My hope is that this kind of security will be delivered from the cloud.
And soon.
We’re working hard on that.
from ransomware-malware-blade http://ift.tt/2fjB7B3
via Specialisti Securitate IT in Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Comentarii
Trimiteți un comentariu