As the world continues to digitally transform, so too have cyber criminals adapted and grown with it. Most notably, the increasing shift to the cloud has opened up new attack vectors and fundamentally changed the way organisations need to manage their security.
Grant Long, Practice Lead for data governance and security at Altron Security, points out that unlike in the past, the majority of applications that are consumed today reside outside the data centre.
“In the past, companies had full control of their application security, but if you look at the commonly used applications today – Teams, Sharepoint, Dropbox, etc – these cannot be properly monitored and thus beg the question: do you know where your data is going?”
He notes that in today’s world of remote work, it is even more difficult to ensure your corporate data is secure. It is for this reason, he adds, that Altron Security has partnered with Netskope, which is able to ensure companies can effectively monitor and control what is done with their data at the endpoint.
“This partnership is an extension of the areas in which we currently play, such as data access, governance and security, and the secure service edge (SSE) network offered by Netskope is a natural extension of controlling, using and enforcing how data is worked with,” states Long.
“They are an ideal partner, and a leader in the brand new SSE Gartner magic quadrant. Their vast experience, SSE leadership and huge investments in R&D will all be key for us moving forward.”
Tinus Janse van Rensburg, Regional Manager for Channel and MSSP at Netskope, highlights that the company has the largest privately owned security network in the world. This enables users to access a single platform to provide secure access, wherever in the world they may be – all they need is an internet connection.
“Most crucially, we ensure that whatever the customers' chosen internal security policies are, these are adhered to by the employees wherever they are working, and wherever the data sits. We are able to apply their specific rules and policies to each of the users, and those security policies follow the data wherever it goes,” he explains.
“In this way, we give the customer control of their data, along with the ability to scale as required – we have some customers who only have maybe five users, while others have up to 250 000 users. Because we have a complete view of the data processed by these employees, there is no chance for them to potentially do something against policy, like extracting information and placing it in Dropbox, for example, something that could not be properly controlled in the past, due to them being outside the company firewall.”
Gartner has suggested that by 2025, 80% of organisations seeking to procure SSE-related services (including Cloud Access Security Broker, secure web gateway and ZNTA offerings) will purchase a consolidated solution. Long explains: “We recognise this as a massive opportunity, and this partnership is critical to our preparation for this future. We are going to see an increasingly hybrid workforce over the next decade, which means businesses are going to need to be able to apply their security policies to these employees, no matter where they are,” he says.
Janse van Rensburg points out that with the cloud, companies should be asking themselves whether they really need hardware anymore.
“When you look at the current hardware delays, due to their dependency on chips that are currently a scarce resource, you could be facing months-long delays. With our solution, you can not only be up and running within days, but would also be geared up for the future Gartner has predicted.
“In my opinion, if you are seeking consolidation in order to gain better control of your security; if you are spending too much on multiple technologies without receiving true value; or if you are adopting a hybrid model for your workforce, you should consider leveraging the cloud and SSE to enable secure operations from anywhere – this is ultimately what you need if you aim to be successful in a digital future,” he concludes.
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