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Innovating for a New Era of Security

Branded Content | 5 min read
Innovating for a New Era of Security

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The cybersecurity landscape is rapidly changing, driven by technological advancements, increased connectivity, and the prevalence of digital systems in all aspects of our lives.

A key consideration is the emergence of new technologies and how adversaries are using them to exploit vulnerabilities and launch cyber-attacks more effectively. To stay ahead, businesses must fundamentally shift their approach to cybersecurity in this new era.
 

A changed dynamic

As technology advances and new tools emerge, cyber adversaries are adapting and using them to bypass defences and exploit weaknesses. Malicious actors who quickly adopt innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) can develop opportunities for novel, sophisticated attacks.

Advanced spear phishing attacks on high-value targets used to be time-consuming and manual. Now, with automation and generative AI, attackers can launch similar targeted attacks on a massive scale. Because this requires minimal effort, they can even target less valuable targets that were previously not worth the effort. This shift makes it increasingly difficult for traditional security measures to keep pace with the volume and complexity of threats.

The rise of sophisticated attacks also leads to additional second-order effects. As these attacks increase, the sheer volume makes it much harder to distinguish between legitimate communications and potential threats. Moreover, the increased workload on security teams can slow response times, raising the likelihood of successful breaches.
 

Not moving fast enough

While technologies like AI have a significant impact on cybersecurity, they are not the only reasons organisations struggle to keep up with evolving threats. For most businesses, inertia and resource constraints also play significant roles. Although zero-day vulnerabilities continue to feature prominently, the reality is that most attacks succeed by exploiting previously known vulnerabilities and attack vectors.

Enterprises often don’t patch as quickly as they want to for a variety of reasons. For example, legacy systems may not support new updates, or patching could disrupt mission-critical systems, leading to downtime that businesses want to avoid. Additionally, the resources needed to validate and install patches are not always available, resulting in delays of days, months, or even years.

Many enterprises hence find themselves in a reactive cycle, addressing threats only after they manifest rather than proactively strengthening their defences. This reactive stance leaves them vulnerable to the next wave of attacks, unable to predict or prevent breaches before they happen.
 

New approach required

As noted earlier, changes in cybersecurity require a fundamental rethink of existing frameworks and practices to combat emerging threats. Much like the transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles necessitated the design of a new architecture, we need a different approach.

The only way to achieve a different outcome is to start thinking and doing things differently, while enterprises that fail to adapt to the changed dynamics of today’s threat landscape risk being left behind. Staying ahead means adopting new technologies for defence before attackers do, using them to thwart threat actors and address traditional gaps.

Given a rapidly expanding attack surface that makes every connected device a potential target, an integrated platform approach offers the best chance to integrate security across all layers, compared to siloed components that don’t communicate with each other.
 

An integrated platform strategy

An integrated platform offers many advantages. For one, a cybersecurity problem in one part of the environment, once resolved, can be seamlessly propagated throughout the entire environment. This means the smallest branch office can now be defended as strongly as the largest regional headquarters.

“Getting visibility and insight across every aspect of your digital infrastructure is important today in protecting against cyber threats, downtime, and poor experiences. This is where integrated platforms, where different solutions communicate and work together seamlessly, as opposed to siloed solutions, deliver security more effectively to companies.”
– Juan Huat Koo, Director, Cybersecurity, Cisco ASEAN

There are other benefits, such as the ability to harness the latest innovations to address new threats and overcome traditional cyber security challenges. For instance, AI tools can be used to facilitate the rapid deployment of new cyber security solutions such as endpoint protection or firewalls, or potentially review security policies across the entire organisation to verify their effectiveness.

Today’s cybersecurity landscape presents new challenges for security teams defending everything that connects a user to an application. Success requires a presence on the user’s device, identity intelligence, network access and enforcement, a presence on the application host, and security analytics to tie it all together.

Cisco offers a new integrated take on cybersecurity through solutions like its Cisco Security Cloud and Cisco Hypershield to address enterprise needs today. Security Cloud offers AI-powered, cloud-delivered protection, while Hypershield is a new security architecture designed to put security where it needs to be, in software, servers, or the cloud.

To learn more about Cisco and how we can help your organisation, click here. Alternatively, you can visit the Cisco booth at GovWare 2024 to learn more.

 

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