The hybrid world – what does it mean? Many businesses have shifted to more flexible strategies over the past few years to give them the advantage of pivoting more effectively in response to rapid changes. On the back of Brexit and Covid-19, this has become a critical objective for many, and as such, we are seeing many more blended or hybrid ways of operating. This includes hybrid working, with many employees choosing the flexible benefits of working remotely and adopting hybrid cloud solutions to support remote working, as well as agility, innovation and scalability.
Managing resiliency in a hybrid world
The benefits of a hybrid world are clear and make it very attractive to organisations – so much so that hybrid cloud is now seen as a critical enabler of agility regarded as an accelerator of business objectives (NTT Hybrid Cloud Report 2021). However, for some, the rapid pace at which the hybrid world is moving can result in certain processes and systems needing to be noticed – namely, security architecture and its resiliency against complex and evolving threats. This is because the hybrid world expands an organisation’s potential attack surface due to an increase in infrastructure, systems and endpoints to manage.
While embracing hybrid is the right step forward for many, ensuring a resilient security architecture is built into those hybrid solutions is essential. So, how can your organisation stay safe and secure in the hybrid world? Look at the following list of four ways to build resilient security architecture.
1. Keep business-critical software and systems maintained
Software updates and system maintenance are essential to keeping security architecture resilient. Improperly maintained systems, irregular updates and poor risk management are all potential weak links that threat actors and attackers can easily take advantage of. Ensure all business-critical systems are updated and secure; this includes software, devices, and applications. In the context of hybrid working, this is particularly crucial and you should manage all users’ devices to ensure they remain updated in line with security best practices. This will help to boost resilience and protect against insider threats, as well as human error.
Regular approaches to patching security fixes and reviewing outdated security infrastructure, systems and software will also help you to evaluate security posture. You should be able to identify where more comprehensive solutions are required and implement any necessary updates to support the resiliency of your security architecture further.
2. Implement automation to reduce time to threat detection
Reducing the time it takes to detect threats can significantly influence your security posture and protect your critical infrastructures and systems from successful attacks’ financial and reputational implications. Strengthening your architecture with SOAR and SIEM capabilities can support this objective with advanced technology that helps to reduce security operations fatigue and increase efficiency across a high volume of alerts.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) technology supports threat detection, compliance and security incident management by collecting and analysing security events and a wide range of other event and contextual data sources. Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) provides playbooks that act as first responders to isolate assets for rapid response times automatically. As a result, during high volumes of alerts for potential incidents, your organisation is equipped to manage and mitigate threats much faster.
Find out more about a best-in-class cybersecurity portfolio for your organisation with Brightsolid’s MDR solution that features SIEM and SOAR capabilities.
3. Double down on access authentication and verification
Adding another layer to your authentication process ensures access is only ever granted to verified requests. By authenticating, authorising and encrypting every access request, you can minimise lateral movement and build additional resilience within your security architecture and across your hybrid infrastructure. A model like Microsoft’s Zero Trust is a great example; with a ‘never trust and always verify’ approach, Zero Trust assumes a breach to verify every request as though it comes from an open network.
This kind of security model helps to close security gaps to minimise risks across identities, endpoints, apps, data, infrastructure and networks. It empowers your organisation to embrace hybrid working with more secure ways for users to work on any device from anywhere.
4. Build security into your cloud infrastructure from day one
The most proactive way to build resilient security architecture is to build it into your hybrid cloud infrastructure from the beginning with a cloud landing zone. This means your organisation can minimise security risks with pre-configured guardrails for your networks, security, access and compliance. A secure cloud landing zone enables you to transform with hybrid by creating a secure environment within your infrastructure from which you can launch and deploy workloads for quick and easy scalability.
Most of the top cloud providers offer cloud landing zone services, including AWS, Azure and Google, so you can configure the hybrid cloud solution that best suits your organisation’s needs and objectives.
Build the foundations of resilient security architecture with Brightsolid
As an AWS partner, Brightsolid offers a Cloud Foundations service our experienced and certified cloud experts deliver. Cloud Foundations is pre-built and configured to your organisation’s specifications with built-in security and compliance to help your organisation optimise costs, agility and flexibility – setting you up for success in the hybrid world.
Discover more about Cloud Foundations and if it’s right for your organisation through our Brightsolid Insights.