5 key principles of a next generation approach to security

SINGAPORE: Amit Yoran, president of RSA, the security division of EMC Corporation, today issued a call for SE Asian companies and governments to re-think their traditional approaches to cyber defense as they increasingly turn to mobile and cloud technologies to store and access data and systems.

Addressing government and private industry cyber security experts at the RSA Conference Asia Pacific & Japan, Yoran discussed how the rapid growth of mobile and cloud technologies in Asia represent a boon to the organizations and industries of the region but also a significant threat to their legacy security operations.

As mobile and cloud technologies decentralize organizations’ digital environments, the perimeter on which traditional cyber defenses are based is disappearing.

The top executive at RSA went on to outline a new approach to security focused on faster detection of and more effective response to cyber threats in a series of five principles:

1. Acceptance that even advanced protections are insufficient for today’s threats - “No matter how high or smart the walls, focused adversaries will find ways over, under, around, and through.”

2. Deep, pervasive visibility from the endpoint to the network to the cloud is necessary – “The single most common and catastrophic mistake made by security teams today is under-scoping an incident and rushing to clean up compromised systems before understanding the broader campaign.”

3. Effective management of identities matters more than ever - “In a world with no perimeter and with fewer security anchor points, identity and authentication matter more than ever . . . At some point in every successful attack campaign, the abuse of identity is a stepping stone the attackers use to impose their will.”

4. Organizations must leverage external threat intelligence - “ should be machine-readable and automated for increased speed and leverage. It should be operationalized into your security program and tailored to our organization’s assets and interests so that analysts can quickly address the threats that pose the greatest risk.”

5. Security programs must be guided by an understanding of risk - “You must understand what matters to your business and what is mission critical. You have to . . . defend what’s important and defend it with everything you have.”