Access control effective across transformed threatscape

Digital transformation offers a broad range of positive benefits to the organisation, but as companies progress on those journeys they often make the common mistake of not building in proper security practices and solutions along the way. One reason for that is the perception that security will throw up roadblocks that slow-down that effort and the productivity benefits that come with digital business. 

At Centrify, we believe that security solutions no longer have that prohibitive dynamic, and instead can actually be a business enabler. We do that by offering cloud-native solutions that support a Zero Trust approach to securing privileged access, which integrates with key audit and compliance controls. 

This uses machine learning to enforce adaptive controls, and ensures a common security model across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments to control privileged access to a variety of new attack surfaces that digital transformation relies upon. 

Digital transformation can significantly expand the threatscape and open up more areas of exposure through new attack surfaces. As a result, organisations must factor in security and access controls at all points of their digital transformation journeys, from planning and testing to implementation and optimisation. 

It also demands that organisations reject the outdated premise of trust but verify, and replace that with a Zero Trust approach to never trust, always verify no matter who is requesting access, whether it is a human or a machine, service, API, or other digital requestor.

Digital transformation creates a vastly-expanded threatscape, which is an opportunity for cyber-attackers to initiate data breaches more easily. As a result, this creates a challenge to ensure all of those potential vulnerabilities are covered, and an opportunity for vendors like Centrify to help organisations secure privileged access to keep the bad guys out.

This uses a Zero Trust approach that verifies who is requesting access, the context of the request, ensuring a clean admin environment, and then enforcing least privilege. 

Two of the biggest expectations from the industry are training and simplicity. Cyber security is difficult to sell, especially if customers are not aware of the threats facing their organisations and how initiatives like digital transformation can alter their security strategies. The goal is to make it easier on partners by simplifying things as much as possible, such as making PAM solutions available as-a-service, and providing the training they need to be successful.

Expectations may vary from customer to customer, but consistently they want to see measurable effect on the security posture of their organisation. That could be as simple as keeping their organisation out of headlines about data breaches, or become very detailed with regards to auditing and compliance. 

Highlights

• Customers want to see measurable effect on the security posture of their organisation. 

• Security solutions no longer have that prohibitive dynamic, and instead can actually be a business enabler.

• Digital transformation creates a vastly-expanded threatscape, which is an opportunity for cyber-attackers.

• Organisations must factor in access control at all points of their digital transformation journeys.

• Two of the biggest expectations from the industry are training and simplicity.

By Andy Heather, General Manager EMEA, Centrify.