Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. This week let’s zoom in on cybersecurity mesh, which brings a twist to the existing security architecture with a distributed approach.
With the accelerated digital transformation, organizations had to jump in and adopt cutting-edge technology to support the new work style. Since only 31% of global organizations have implemented a Zero Trust network (ZTN), according to ManageEngine’s Digital Readiness survey, more efforts to create awareness and education about its benefits are needed. Adopting well-planned cybersecurity policies has far-reaching impacts on organizations. Zero Trust Architecture refocused the typical “trust insiders and block intruders” security approach to “do not trust, always verify”. Many organizations agree with this ZTN approach and are applying the term “cybersecurity mesh”. It serves as an extension of ZTN and extends Zero Trust to all entities regardless of location and devices used.
The objective of mesh technology is to bring a distributed approach to network and infrastructure security. This moves the security mechanism away from the traditional perimeter-wise focus to the identification of humans and systems on the network. Thereby, creating smaller, individual perimeters around each access point. This helps in centralizing the security policies while ensuring the enforcement is more distributed, a much-needed approach for enterprises functioning from anywhere.
With the increase in client-facing interactions on various digital channels and a surge in remote workers, security and risk management leaders deal with complex identity and access management (IAM) challenges. Considering how the “all insiders are trusted” and “all outsiders are threats” model is no longer effective, it is no surprise Gartner’s 2021 report states cybersecurity mesh is its top trend. It also predicts that by 2025, cybersecurity mesh will support 50% of identity and access management requests, paving the way for a more distributed, mobile, and adaptive access management model.
Here are five insightful reads about cybersecurity mesh and how it is more effective than the existing security concepts.
This article gives insights into the working of a Zero Trust Network and shows how cybersecurity mesh fits into this. Cybersecurity mesh helps implement a Zero Trust Architecture by securing all data and systems accessed securely no matter their location.
The author highlights the issues where many organizations failed to see that during the pandemic we were not prepared to work remotely and the technology we have currently does not support the flexibility required for the situation. Thereby, analyzing the dawn of cybersecurity mesh’s ideology into the existing security concepts.
With more and more businesses adopting a hybrid working model, the way we deal with and deploy cybersecurity also has to evolve and shift. The author concludes that cybersecurity mesh will continue to remain a key trend in 2021, as it provides necessary benefits that traditional cybersecurity methods simply can’t, including agility, flexibility, adaptability, and reliability.
This article dives into the need to implement a new strategy and explores the steps necessary to do so. It also explains that a comprehensive data security mesh strategy will face challenges that require auditing existing technology, properly training staff, and vetting all technology partners.
Incidents of cyberattacks continue to jeopardize data security. With remote work becoming the norm during the pandemic, threat actors have expanded the available vulnerable surface to target. The author describes the traditional approach of building “walled cities” around a network, compared to cybersecurity mesh that paves the path for password-protected perimeters to secure networks. He also describes the vital factors to consider before the mesh technology.
With the rise in remote working and the work-from-anywhere model, organizations now include a diverse environment of employees, customers, partners, and assets. As more and more assets get digitized, organizations shift to cloud-based environments where cybersecurity mesh will provide more flexibility and better protection to secure investments in digital transformations.
This modern concept in security architecture enables organizations to have distributed control and extend security to where it is most needed. Now is the time to redesign your network security as a cybersecurity mesh; make sure you have a centralized identity solution and start creating policies that will protect your resources at the individual level.
