How can cross-silo collaboration strengthen cybersecurity?

Security is considered a key performance indicator, along with the traditional KPIs for reliability, performance, and availability. Therefore, it is imperative to deploy visibility and threat detection capabilities across the multivendor and virtualised network and service infrastructures in this interconnected world.

Cybercrime has risen to unprecedented levels over the past few months, with cybercriminals exploiting new vulnerabilities and causing disruption across VPN networks as well as firewalls and cloud-based tools used by employees working from their homes. By preventing legitimate users from accessing networks, attackers can freeze operations and cause financial losses and damage to a company’s reputation.

Bad actors are increasingly finding new ways to infiltrate networks by weaponising unknown attack vectors, leveraging mobile hotspots, and targeting compromised Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Thus, the complexity and frequency of cybercrime threats are alarming businesses. They want unparalleled visibility and insights into the growing threat landscape to respond appropriately to the attacks.

As if 2020 didn’t present enough challenges, it also brought an increase in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), ransomware, and malware attacks. Moreover, as companies that have been affected by one or more of these network security incidents can attest, cyberattacks can have a devastating impact on businesses. It’s a death knell for most organisations when they can’t access mission-critical data or systems remotely.

As businesses increasingly expand their reliance on network and cloud architectures, this trend has exposed new cyberattack risks. To combat this clear and current danger, network operations (NetOps) and security operations (SecOps) teams need to break out of their respective silos and collaborate to meet this rising threat. Amidst growing enterprise adoption of software-defined data centres and public and private cloud architecture, cross-silo collaboration is increasingly important.

Collaboration between network and security teams is critical

It is critical to protect our cyber-connected world of networks and devices from the increasing number of attacks. Security teams should detect, validate, investigate, and respond to threats on an ongoing basis. However, security is also a strategic priority for network teams. A reduction in security risk is among the critical measurements of success for network teams, even before service quality, network visibility, and end-user experience. It’s also essential that network and security teams work together to determine whether an IT service event is a performance issue or a cyberattack. In addition, the cross-team collaboration will improve cost and operational efficiency, reduce overall risks, and speed up the pace at which security incidents are resolved.

According to a recent white paper from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) on NetOps and SecOps collaboration, 35 per cent of network operations teams say security system problems, such as bad policies and device failures, have led to complex and difficult-to-troubleshoot service performance issues. Another 35 per cent reported that incidents initially presented themselves as complex service performance problems that required cross-silo collaboration.

Thus, IT leaders must foster greater collaboration by delivering a transformative security view across operations and infrastructure, which includes the following:

• A data repository that can be used by both security and network teams
• A toolset that allows for collaborative workflows
• Policies, regulations, and best practices that are documented to formalise cross-team collaboration

This effort will provide the much-needed strong foundation for configuring and implementing a robust cybersecurity strategy to protect what is considered the new gold for any business: its data.

Calling on all stakeholders

Cybercrime has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry, and cybercriminals will continue to develop new methods for launching sophisticated attacks. Only a collaborative effort involving all internet community stakeholders, connected device manufacturers, network equipment manufacturers, internet service providers, cloud providers, integrators, government agencies, enterprises, and the cybersecurity industry will successfully create a safer cyberspace for all.

Gaurav Mohan is the VP sales, SAARC and Middle East, Netscout

Read: Faces to watch: Cybersecurity leaders in MEA