The uncontrolled growth of security point solutions means what is needed today is an architecture for sustainable security.
A little over a year ago I was fortunate enough to buy a tiny cottage in the English countryside. The house had been looked after, with a clear path in and out, but the rest of the garden and small orchard had been allowed to be overgrown and were largely unreachable without running the gauntlet of brambles and nettles. As I cleared away the nettles and pulled brambles from the treetops, it occurred to me that this situation is not unlike the one frequently found in IT security – and that security infrastructures could do with a little weeding out as well. But where to start? Many enterprises have a well-maintained core application estate with a clear way to access it, normally a VPN (opens in new tab). In addition, they have added security solutions over time to defend against external and internal threats. This way, however, they have cultivated a complex, overgrown security environment which can be difficult to maintain and often also creates challenges with user experience, especially if applications and services lie outside the core infrastructure, like cloud or SaaS (opens in new tab) applications. All of this infrastructure takes a lot of work to just maintain, and can be difficult to adapt if new and unexpected threats emerge. Instead of this uncontrolled growth of security point solutions, what is needed today is an architecture for sustainable security. These are two words which come up frequently these days, but rarely together. Therefore, this requires an explanation. For me, there are five aspects – or branches, if you will – of sustainable security:
A fresh approach to security is needed: an approach which better supports today’s environment where both applications (opens in new tab) and the people that need to access them are more distributed than ever before – a situation which will most likely continue into the foreseeable future, and seems likely to grow more complex over time.
