Page 21 - Cyber Warnings

Not Listening to Your CIO Can Cost You Millions

Why companies need to rethink traditional, perimeter network protection

By Jean Turgeon, Vice President & Chief Technologist, Avaya

When you leave your house for the day, do you lock the front door but leave the back door
unlocked and the windows open? No, because you wouldn’t leave other access points open and
exposed.

In a recent study commissioned by Avaya, businesses cited complexity (35%), lack of resources
(29%), didn’t know it was possible (22%) and too risky to the rest of the network (22%) as
reasons for not implementing end-to-end network segmentation, an essential security measure.

Using the same analogy, if a locking mechanism for your home seemed complex or was going
to cost more initially than anticipated, would you simply just leave your home exposed? Neither
would I.

So, why relax standards when it comes to securing confidential company and customer data?

End-to-end network segmentation is essential to ensuring the various entry points to business
data are kept secure.

The dilemma most companies face is that while a majority of security spending is directed
towards a rigid network perimeter, this traditional perimeter has morphed into an “everywhere
perimeter” due to cloud computing, outsourcing,

IoT and BYOD technology. All respondents to the aforementioned study agreed that end-to-end
segmentation is an essential security measure (75% “strongly agree”) – yet only about one-in-
four (23%) say their organization actually implements end-to-end segmentation.

Without proper controls, a breach of one of these entry points – such as an employee’s email or
device, or a wireless connection – could provide a hacker with the virtual keys to the castle.

A proper end-to-end network segmentation deployment is a foundational measure to address
the fluid characteristics of an everywhere perimeter.

Unlike traditional technologies that may not extend network wide and are onerous to deploy,
end-to-end segmentation natively extends from the data center to the desktop or smart devices
while reducing complexity and operational burden.

21 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine October 2016 Edition
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