Castle-and-moat security architectures include stacks of security devices such as IDS, IPS, firewalls, DLP, and SSL inspection, among others. These security tools examine outbound and inbound traffic for threats and malicious activity, and each one produces its own reports, logs, and data.
The challenge for IT is to parse, and then make sense from the deluge of data. Troubleshooting requires finding a needle in a haystack. Correction: in multiple haystacks. Often, determining causality requires detecting, then analyzing correlation across multiple systems, a manual task made all the more difficult when IT must integrate reports from each individual security device. In each individual stack. In each individual branch office.
The data deluge only grows larger and the management challenge more daunting as enterprises move to cloud applications (which generate more data traffic). Depending on the number and location of deployments, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with multiple data sets.
Malicious actors count on this. They hide malware in an avalanche of data. Some cyber threats are “multi-part,” and detonate only after seemingly-innocent components regroup into a malicious whole on a client machine. More data plus more cyber tools plus and more cyber tool reports equals more cover for cyber threats.
How do IT security teams overcome the data avalanche to get insight into who is accessing what, where, and how without missing critical malicious activity? Can enterprises reduce the number of tools (and reports) without compromising security?
Yes, to that second question. Regarding the first, enterprises need to move to a cloud-based, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture that provides a centralized, global view of all user activity. A SASE architecture secures a user’s direct connection to an application regardless of where the user is located or where the application is hosted. IT can see all “what, where, and who” activity in real time. SASE is cloud-based and oversees all user-to-application connectivity, providing management with a comprehensive, unified “single-pane-of-glass” monitoring view. Contrast that with the complexity of integrating data from dozens of multiple, static reports from different security-tool stacks.
A SASE architecture provides:
- A comprehensive picture of who is interacting with what application where anywhere in the enterprise
- A dynamic, comprehensive list of the hourly transactions, threats blocked, and policies enforced
- The movement of any threats in corporate data traffic, with place of origin, attempted targets, and threat types
Learn more about how Zscaler delivers centralized security visibility here.