As your clients increase the number of users, devices and applications to achieve their business goals, reevaluating and updating their security plans can be an ongoing process. You need to have an agile, integrated and unified security plan in place while also avoiding five key mistakes that can derail your game plan.
Mistake #1 – Not implementing a Zero-Trust model
Your clients’ remote and hybrid work policies mean that there are more users and devices accessing their networks than ever before. You need to deploy a zero-trust security model, meaning no user or device is trusted by default. Make sure your clients’ security architectures can automatically identify devices connecting to their networks, securely authenticate the user and provide or deny access based on the permissions associated with that user’s account.
Mistake #2 – Evaluating cloud platforms and security solutions in a silo
Organizations leverage an average of five different cloud platforms which can lead to sprawl caused by redundant, bolted-on security solutions and misconfigurations. Ensure your clients’ security stack is capable of supporting these cloud resources with features like autoscaling. It should also be truly cloud native across multiple cloud platforms.
Mistake #3 – Focusing on prevention instead of time to detect
Cybercriminals are increasingly using automated and targeted attacks which limit the time you have to defend against them. They are using automation, cloud scale, and artificial intelligence (AI) to sequence even more sophisticated and polymorphing attack components across splintered perimeters. Your security plan must break its attack sequence before it’s successful. This means evaluating your security ability to move from detection to response and launching new defenses across your environments. This includes evaluating detection capabilities for accuracy and speed, the quality of the AI in place and looking into global and community-based threat intelligence sharing.
Mistake #4 – Expanding network connectivity without converged security
As your clients’ networks expand so do their attack surfaces. While they may be overwhelmed by network complexity, don’t let them press the easy button and invest in multiple, standalone security solutions. Guide them toward a solution that converges security and networking functions in a single, integrated system that can expand to any edge.
Mistake #5 – Failing to address your client’s entire ecosystem
If your clients are like many organizations, they have accumulated a wide variety of standalone security tools designed to protect a single function or segment within their networks. This can limit their IT team’s visibility and control and lead to more opportunities for bad actors to infiltrate their networks.
Having a clear view of your client’s entire ecosystem is critical. FortiGuard Labs can help. It not only offers cyber threat assessments, but it also collaborates with the global intelligence community to share industry best practices and impede the spread of attacks.
Learn more about Fortinet’s Cyber Threat Assessment and get your sample report here.