CybersafetyConnections March 7, 2022 vol#57
- CybersafetyConnections blog this week focuses on an article in Fortune Magazine December 2021/January 2022 on “Defending Against Digital Disruption.”
- Protect the whole IT environment from inside the organization to outside third party providers to customers, and touchpoint to endpoint cybersecurity protection that starts at product development to supply chain to computer operations, cloud computing, software, and applications.
- Use Zero trust security for verifying every touchpoint and endpoint before granting access to computer resources.
- The use of AI and data analytics help to detect and fight upcoming know and unknown cyber threats.
Protecting against cyberattacks
This blog is by no means trying to endorse the products sold by Lenovo though I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad. Yourcybersafetyadvocate is just taking a leaf out of the broad cybersecurity measures employed to protect against cyberattacks from the point of product development to the supply chain to the computing operations.
With the increasing digital transformation, the number of devices, the volume of data, and the type of computer operations employed by organizations are keeping up with the change and with resulting increase in cyberattacks.
Two years into the pandemic and some businesses are still not prepared to deal with this problem. Besides increasing cyberattacks/threats, cybercriminals have become more advanced and successful in their cybercrime.
The Whole IT environment from touchpoints to endpoints
The solution to avoid these cyberattacks will require more than just a broad security solution to protect the increasing number of devices, apps, and networks. What is needed is a broad approach to data privacy, user identity management, and cyber defense for the whole business/organization. This will involve looking at the IT environment as a whole from inside the organization to outside third-party service providers and customers.
Controls applied to the traditional network touchpoints are being put in place for each high-tech endpoint. This means extending cybersecurity to the supply chain, cloud computing environment, and software/application environment.
For organizations to remain protected and productive in both remote and hybrid work environments, technology that uses high tech protection for each touchpoint is employed.
An example of such high-tech protection is provided by the Lenovo ThinkShield security platform that protects firms from cyberattacks by providing protection to devices as well data security, identity security, and online solutions that as a whole prevent and mitigates threats.
This solution has been developed to help keep companies safe through the life span of the hardware, from its origin to when it is discarded. The idea is to combine different types of digital safeguards that will provide broad cybersecurity measures. The reason for starting at product development is that hackers are launching attacks on supply chains before the products are shipped out.
With this approach, every part of the product is examined to make sure there is no built-in risk. Supply chain security is an area of great concern due to previous cyber breach incidence like Solar Winds.
Zero Trust Security
Zero-trust security principle requires all users inside and outside the organization to be authenticated, authorized and continuously validated for security reasons before they are given access to computer, application and data. Zero-trust is used to verify hardware and can be applied to software and network exchange level, and this will help enterprise leaders to keep the supply chain safe at every level. In the cloud environment, this protection will apply to cloud application security, digital privacy, and data protection.
This zero-trust, end-to-end structure becomes more important for organizations to put in place as part of their operations in the remote and hybrid work environment as organizations are migrating to the cloud. So, you have this security structure below the cloud network and the hardware also.
Zero-trust is put in place as a result of the type of threats in the current environment that ranges from organizational to personal risks as employees may be using the same devices and same passwords for both personal and professional use. This sort of solution builds security into hardware to protect against BIOS(basic input/output system) and organization-wide attacks. In this way, security is not standing in the way of innovation and productivity.
AI and data analytics counter known and unknown cyber threats
Part of the preventive measures involves the use of AI and analytics to detect upcoming attacks in other to respond to them. That is the case in Lenovo’s partnership with SentinelOne to detect both known and unknown threats and counter those threats.
Conclusion
This cybersecurity measure is not just for big companies, it applies to small businesses that are embracing the secure and digital way of serving consumers.
Having these broad cybersecurity measures will give companies a competitive advantage.
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