I saw an interesting report [1] this week released last month (June 2019) by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) about the increase complexity dealing with network security. The report highlights these three things:

• Increase in the past 2 years where network security is more complex and challenging (83% of those survey agree)
• Business difficulty keeping up with network security (i.e. wrong network security, process and controls)
• Looking for new types of network security that includes consolidation and architecture featuring centralizing management

The report identified three main factors related to the increase in network security complexity. The attack surface and the workload are both growing and the threats and vulnerabilities are more complex to identify and deal with. The security team has to keep up with more devices that add complexity to a network (IoT, tablets, phones, laptops, cloud computing, etc) that are now widely integrated to the enterprise. Complex security events can lead to short or extended network outages, application or network availability, loss of proprietary data and/or productivity.

In The Need for Change section, the report highlight the following priorities: "[...] the biggest factors driving network security include preventing/detecting malware threats (47%), regulatory compliance (42%), support for cloud computing initiatives (38%), and the need for network security to be more scalable to support dynamic business processes and new business initiatives (34%)."[1]

What keeps you up at night? Are your priorities similar to those identified in this report?

[1] https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/security/defense-orchestrator/esg-research-insights-report.pdf

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Guy Bruneau IPSS Inc.
My Handler Page
Twitter: GuyBruneau
gbruneau at isc dot sans dot edu