Edge Insights

The Future Security Architecture

The world needs to take security architecture more seriously. Bluntly speaking, individuals and businesses still do not consider security architecture to be that important. Organizations stand by as IT or development teams make only token efforts to understand business security architecture requirements or omit such analysis altogether.

The problem is that with the digital transformation of all aspects of our lives, IT’s ever-increasing role means riskier IT. High-quality security architecture is important for the safety of smart medical devices, factory equipment, cars, and all manner of systems we depend on. Safety extends to a need for information confidentiality, privacy, and integrity, and let’s not forget the availability of the information we require to run our businesses.

To deliberate on the issues and paving the way for a secure future, TechCircle organised Future of Trust As A Service, a digital conclave powered by Sophos on February 17th, 2021 where industry experts and torchbearers to deliberate on the future of cybersecurity, its implementation, challenges, and solutions, thus carving a roadmap for the future.

Before Covid, online business interactions were as least as common as in-person interactions. Since the outbreak, they have become the norm. As companies prepare for post-pandemic operations, many business leaders are thinking about the shape of the “new normal.” It has to be driven by the quality of the online customer experience more than ever. Most people today would agree that cloud-native technologies will become mainstream. and a linear economy is replaced by a circular economy. 

As the discussions mature, cybersecurity, authentication rights, and network access get their due. Probably this is the most discussed agenda today when people are looking about employees working from anywhere, customers getting in touch and interacting with brands from anywhere, suppliers and partners are getting more integrated digitally. The important question becomes how do I authenticate people? Beyond the perimeter of the organization, we have now started looking at the authentication in a very different light. Earlier, it was biometric versus nonbiometric, and now we have started talking about facial recognition and AI playing is an important role. The digital workspace needs to be more intelligent, and need to understand the working style of the employer and adapt to the working style of the employer. AI is also unlocking potential in BFSI, with True AI starting to see some results in fraud detection, risk management in the banking sector, globally, as well as in India. With all of this comes the issue of security and the data shows that there is a 300% increase in reported cybercrime since the beginning of the pandemic. 

India ranks 11th worldwide in the number of attacks caused by servers that were hosted in the country, which accounts for 2.2 million incidents in Q1 2020 alone as compared to 855K incidents in Q4 of 2019. Shalil Gupta, Chief Business Officer at Mosaic Digital - an HT Media company during his keynote at the digital summit said, "a total of $1.04 billion is being spent on security and the total market would be growing at 12%. But the point here is that earlier, we have seen prevention buying as the priority which is now being overtaken by security services which are growing by 15%, and therefore we call it trust as a service, because it's just not the prevention, it is about access management, about identity management." 

It is fair to assume that there is no organization on the planet that has not been attacked by hackers. Plugging the gaps through a preventive and buying and investing mechanism is not solving the problem, though you may be climbing the maturity curve. But that maturity curve is leaving behind with it a lot of inefficiencies at your end. Unrealistic need to manage and control everything under the sun without a realistic ROI insight. Is that the right approach? Shalil Gupta further added that, "I believe the important things to consider while designing your security architecture are the risk appetite in taking the trade-offs and getting aware of it, focus on employee awareness and training, not compromising on acceleration, innovation, and agility. We should make sure that the business is well enabled, without really having any fear that it would be compromised. One thing which I want you to take back home is if you understand the risk around your assets, your processes, your people, your partners, your customers; quantify them. Security investments should be directed towards business production processes."

For more details on this keynote and insights on the security landscape, visit futureoftrust.techcircle.in