Optimising infrastructure – the way forward
Five key success factors emerged from our conversations with digital leaders:
Security without walls
As companies transition from locked down on-premise corporate networks to cloud-based, software defined networking such as SD-WAN, hybrid infrastructures and software as a service, the security challenge changes. Digital leaders are putting security at the heart of their decision-making. The CCS Insight survey found that almost all (96%) respondents said security was an important or essential aspect to their decision-making when choosing their SD-WAN solution.4
Investment towards up-to-date security is critical. The knock-on effects of a security breach are numerous. Possible financial penalties imposed for a GDPR breach and the impact on your brand can be serious. Customer confidence in your ability to safeguard their information is critical to any customer engagements and no amount of commercial incentives can convince a discerning customer to take a risk with their data.
Fergal Power, VP-Sourcing, Aptiv says, "Investment towards up to date security is critical. The knock-on effects of a security breach are numerous. Possible financial penalties imposed for a GDPR breach and the impact on your brand can be serious. Customer confidence in your ability to safeguard their information is critical to any customer engagements and no amount of commercial incentives can convince a discerning customer to take a risk with their data.”
In relation to IT network security, the survey identified the top three potential risks of moving to SD-WAN was the much wider attack surface to manage and protect (resulting from re-architecting for cloud and consuming more internet in the WAN), the use of public internet connectivity and the concern about lack of skills to correctly apply security.
Inevitably, the number and type of services providers offering to help with this challenge has grown too. In 2020, research giant IDC saw more security service providers entering the managed security services market. It commented: “All these providers offer a differentiated value, service, and support to their offerings. As organisations start evaluating providers for their outsourcing needs, the breadth of options can only exacerbate the evaluation process in choosing the right service provider.”5
A key factor in the decision to outsource infrastructure to the cloud is the focus and resources cloud providers throw at security. But it’s not possible to outsource responsibility for security entirely. As infrastructure grows more complex, if providers can’t manage both the network overlay and underlay, security is weakened. Businesses need to take ownership of security.
Jeremy Smith at Avery Dennison says, “We’re implementing a zero trust strategy. Gartner refers to it as SASE (sassy) architecture, where we’re implementing things like SD-WAN, cloud-based web gateways and firewalls, to change from a traditional walled fortress infrastructure, to one that has local breakouts.”
He explains: “Now we’re getting into refactoring our whole network topology from an MPLS-based circuit system to much more of an SD-WAN, and even, long-term, maybe even dissolving that network as we look at things like zero trust network access.”
Rick Casarez,
Technical Director - Network Software Engineering and Operations | eBay
Every time there’s a new technology it’s got to be explored from the security perspective, to figure out what are the vulnerabilities? What are the kill chains that would allow an attacker to exploit it? Once those are identified, you figure out a risk profile, and then the business decides whether they want to take that risk.
Action Points
- Review security strategy to ensure that digital collaboration brought in in a hurry in the pandemic is secure for the long term.
- Check that prospective technology partners can support you with both network underlay and overlay security.
Source: BT/Techpros survey
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