5 Mistakes To Avoid When Evaluating Your Next Security Investment

Organizations today are more connected than ever. On average most organizations are utilizing 5 different public/private clouds. This increase in connectivity is taking place at the same time when organizations are changing how and when employees can access applications and consume content. This has led to an influx of connected devices that have splintered and changed the security perimeter. The devices connected to an organization's network used to be limited. Security teams had visibility of all connected devices. That is no longer the case as organizations adopt cloud networks, introduce remote and hybrid working models. The internet-of-things has introduced even more devices that can connect to a network. All of this has introduced unique security vulnerabilities and complexities. Often attack sequences go undetected and even when they are identified, the enforcement and response lag behind. 

See also: 5 Key Areas Where Architects Must Augment Cloud-native Security Tools

Attacks are getting more sophisticated

As the gaps and vulnerabilities in cybersecurity increase. Cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated. Cloud networks today have a much wider attack surface and more edges that are vulnerable to attack. Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly automated and sophisticated as attackers are leverage cloud scale to exploit known and new gaps in organizations' security posture. Some are utilizing polymorphing attack components that are capable of targeting multiple edges simultaneously. 

Features of a modern unified security solution

Change in cyberattacks and risks requires a change in security that is meant to guard against them. Organizations need to invest in a unified modern security solution. Below are some features that such a solution should have:

• It should cover the entire attack surface and be easy to expand to increase new edges
• It should manage the full attack cycle from detection to enforcement
• There should be a single context-aware security policy across the organization
• The solution should support multiple vendors and hybrid cloud environments with cloud-native security
• It should be capable of assessing risks and automatically make adjustments to the security posture in order to prevent attacks
• It should provide insights and the ability to monitor and manage all solutions, thus allowing a lead IT team to scale and fulfill the organization's security requirements

When updating their existing security or making investments organizations should keep the above factors in mind. There are 5 common mistakes that organizations make when evaluating security investments:

1. Trusting too much
2. Evaluating cloud platforms and application security in a silo
3. Focusing on detection instead of time to prevention
4. Expanding connectivity without native security
5. Not including your full ecosystem  

Download this white paper by Fortinet to learn more about these mistakes, their consequences, and how businesses can avoid them. We are living in a data-centric, increasingly connected world. The consequences of a successful data breach or compromised network security can be severe. According to some reports, the average cost of a data breach can be USD 4 million.

Subscribe to whitepapers.online for access to high-quality resources and technology news.