This post was originally published here by Jacob Serpa.
Last week, Bitglass participated in Gartner Catalyst, a conference designed to educate organizations’ technical staffs. Whether it was from conversations at Bitglass’ booth, or from Gartner and vendor speaking sessions, a number of trends consistently bubbled to the surface.
Technological Evolution
Technology is in a constant state of change, and firms need to proactively embrace it. The way that things are done (logistics, user interfaces, security, transportation, et cetera) continues to evolve, and a failure to look to the horizon and adapt can leave the enterprise scrambling to survive. The examples of Kodak and Blockbuster illustrate this point well. As noted by one speaker, if you don’t disrupt yourself, someone else will.
Identity
Breaches continue to grow as an issue in the cloud. Interestingly, the attack vector most responsible for breaches is identity. Stolen and compromised credentials play a significant role in data theft. Because of this, the enterprise must be able to verify the identities of its employees and ensure only legitimate data access. There are a number of solutions that can assist with this (cloud access security brokers (CASBs), identity providers (IdPs), et cetera), and organizations must select those that meet their security needs.
Artificial Intelligence
As job functions, industries, and everyday tasks require increasingly rapid and thorough analytics, new tools must be adopted. In particular, artificial intelligence and machine learning are seen as the way of the future. AI can analyze behaviors to ensure employee identity (as discussed above), as well as assist with recognizing and responding to zero-day malware. It is a helpful tool which will increase in use and effectiveness as technology continues to evolve.
Native and Third-Party Security
A great deal of time and energy at the conference was focused on describing cybersecurity in relation to cloud apps like Office 365, in particular. Details about different native security features were expounded, and advice was offered on how to select the correct security plans from cloud providers. However, the need for additional, third-party security solutions was also presented. A certain analyst mentioned that any organization making use of cloud apps needs a cloud access security broker in order to ensure complete data protection, visibility, and control.
Cloud access security brokers are the next step in security technology evolution. They are capable of identity management, artificial intelligence like UEBA, and extensive data and threat protection. Download the report below to learn more.
Photo: synisys.com
