For an effective posture, pair cybersecurity with simplicity rather than complexity

👀 Discover in this article 📝 by @Etay Maor, When more is too much in security (computerweekly.com), that, contrary to popular belief, multiplying security tools 🔐 undermines the effectiveness of the security posture.

Faced with exposure to cyber threats, many organisations instinctively increase 📈 the number of security tools.

A recent study, https://panaseer.com/reports-papers/report/2022-security-leaders-peer-report/, shows that these have increased by almost 20% since 2019 in large companies.

Yet this approach can have the opposite of the intended effect.

Beyond the spiralling costs, stacking tools increases complexity.

IT teams or their contractors must put in a great deal of effort on integration and maintenance.

This requires expertise and a very heavy workload for an often uncertain result, because:

• How can information from multiple sources and formats be collected and correlated effectively?
• How can its relevance be assessed and false positives accurately identified?
• How can you make sure the tools work properly together when they must be constantly updated?

And ultimately, do these tools really contribute to an effective and lasting security posture?

Proof of this: the early signs of an attack are present in the information system weeks or even months before attackers act.

During this period, IT departments have many opportunities to detect, limit or even stop the attack by identifying the operations under way:

• Password harvesting 🔑
• Execution of system tools 🧰
• Privilege changes, lateral movement towards high-value data, or setting up exfiltration tunnels

Yet in most cases, these signals escape the security controls in place.

So rather than constantly trying to add new defence functions, it is more useful to focus on using the tools already in place effectively.

It matters little how attackers got into the information system. Their agility will always allow them to find a way in.

What matters is countering what they came to do.

And on this point, attackers always have the same objectives: phishing, password theft, vulnerability scanning.

In conclusion, stacking security tools brings more complexity than effectiveness to organisations' cyber defence.

It is more useful to build on simple technologies that IT teams master well.

This approach, based on simplicity and security effectiveness, is one of the pillars of the SASE [Secure Access Service Edge] model defined by Gartner.

In this model, the essential security functions against intrusions and malware:

• Are delivered from the Cloud ☁ and require no deployment within the information system
• Cover all assets and ways of working
• Are updated automatically by the vendor, with no action required from IT teams
• Unify all security events to allow direct, effective and simplified analysis

To see in practice what this model brings through Cato Cloud from Cato Networks, nothing beats a demo!

📅 👉

@Christophe Lopez-Castel @Adrien Porcheron @Bertrand Delassaux @Sylvain CHAREYRE @Joseph FERNANDO @SASETY

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