INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security
The real advantage of moving your
security controls to the cloud
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all important factors driving the move of
security to the cloud, but these miss a key
value sleeper; the network effect.
A key value of moving one’s security
controls to the cloud is the massive security
centric network effect that can be more
easily gleaned when one is simultaneously
hosting security for tens-of-thousands of
global organisations.
This security network effect shows up
in two related ways: firstly, as attackers
shift their tools and tactics, as they are
continuously doing, cloud service providers
that can effectively pull early warning data
from their systems and combine it with a
multitude of external intelligence sources,
can very quickly detect the attackers’ new
tactics and make content changes to better
defend against them. Literally, the whole
network of customers benefits from the
discovery of a new attack type that even
hits just one member of the network.
I
t is not exactly news that most security
controls, particularly those that are
traditionally thought of as network-
centric ones (versus endpoint-centric ones),
are moving to the cloud. Many think that
this is occurring because of the massive
economies-of-scale enabled by cloud
providers’ multi-tenancy architectures,
the shifting of hardware and software
deployment, upgrading, and administration
from the customer to the cloud provider, or
the elimination of costly data centre real
estate and its associated operating costs for
customer organisations.
Others think that the shift is due to the
security staffing economies-of-scale that
are inherent with cloud providers versus
typical organisations. Of course, these are
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INTELLIGENTCIO
ONCE THE NEW
FUNCTIONALITY
IS AVAILABLE,
IT CAN BE MADE
AVAILABLE TO
EVERY CUSTOMER,
GLOBALLY AND
IMMEDIATELY.
There is a second security network effect
that can be leveraged by cloud security
providers. Detecting and blocking some new
attacker tools and tactics can sometimes
go beyond needing just changes to
security content, they require new security
functionality. As the development and
deployment of cloud services differ radically
from traditional software or appliance-based
development models – usually in the form of
DevOps – cloud service providers can build
and deploy new functionality with relative
ease and speed.
No need to wait for twice-yearly software
releases. And once the new functionality is
available, it can be made available to every
customer, globally and immediately. Another
form of the security network effect of cloud
security service providers in action! n
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