Cybersecurity Awareness Month: 6 Tech Leaders on How to Up the Ante on Security

The theme for this year’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM), ‘Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart,’ reminds us that cybersecurity is a shared responsibility and each one has a critical role to play. Here, six tech leaders weigh in on the importance of security and why this month should serve as a reminder for organizations to equip themselves with the right tools to avoid data leakage and other security risks.  

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the fault lines in organizations’ security posture. It also pushed business leaders to stress test their business continuity plans. Now, almost a year into the pandemic, businesses are responding to the new work landscape by ramping up secure access technologies, tapping heavily into firewalls, identity, and management (IAM) essentials, and endpoint security to keep malicious actors out.  

Besides, there is a massive shift in the top tech priorities. IT decision-makers are now talking about effective asset management processes, mostly an afterthought in the business landscape. Just when businesses of all sizes decided to go full steam ahead with the public cloud, security reared its ugly ahead. With more organizations storing sensitive data in the public cloud, business leaders are being advised to layer the cloud data with encryption to ensure a secure cloud experience. 

In honor of cybersecurity awareness month, six tech industry leaders share their perspective on the importance of cybersecurity in today’s world and what steps organizations must take to protect their data from rapidly evolving cyber-threats. 

Let’s dive in:  

SD-WAN Is Foundational to Security 

Rob Chapman, Director of Security Architecture, CyberaOpens a new window  

The pandemic has forced in less than a year business culture change that would have likely taken the next decade. This monumental shift has challenged the most adept operators. The business and IT benefits of moving data and operations to the edge are unavoidable now. However, in doing so the safety provided by the corporate datacenter’s technology and procedures can be jeopardized. Exacerbating this already complicated issue is the fact that not only has data and operations moved outside the relative safety of an organization’s four walls, so too now has many employees in what has become today’s work from home (WFH) paradigm. One that may persist even after the global pandemic has been addressed and overcome. Consequently, the cybersecurity question has evolved to include not only how best to protect against external bad actors, but also from the actions – however innocent – of employees. 

The answer of course includes technology — ideally, an agile software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) platform that empowers IT/security professionals to rapidly deploy, secure, and optimizes on-premises, remote, and cloud-based applications and services. This is because the remote network edge presents unique challenges that have not been solved by traditional networking. In contrast, built for the way we work today – SD-WAN can make it easy, non-disruptive, and cost-effective to securely deliver, test, and deploy new apps and services across heterogeneous environments. The answer continues with a combination of appropriate technical controls and enforce policies that limit the blast radius of user/employee actions whether unintended or subversive. Then, with the right technology, controls, and enforced policies in place, IT/security professionals can rest easier knowing their organization is cybersecure today, tomorrow, and into the future. 

Learn More: Narrowing the Cybersecurity Skills Gap Starts With Security Awareness Training

Every Organization Is in Cyber Criminal’s Crosshairs Now. Are CISOs Prepared? 

Raif Mehmet, VP EMEA, Bitglass Opens a new window

In recent years there has been a major shift in the way businesses conduct their operations and how employees do their work. And then in recent months, the shift from office-based to home-based work, combined with a lack of adequate forward planning, has been a painful transition for many.

Before the start of the year, the prospect of a fully remote workforce seemed far-fetched for the majority of organizations. According to research, only 29% of respondents claimed they were fully prepared for remote working when the pandemic hit. From a security perspective, the picture is concerning, with 70% stating they were either moderately prepared or not prepared at all. Today, across many organizations, corporate culture has changed dramatically. Many people now access, share, and store data in a variety of ways, using diverse services and devices. For this reason, it is now more important than ever for organizations to prioritize security and be cyber aware.

With the shift to remote working shaping to be long term, businesses can no longer afford to improvise when it comes to data protection. Instead, organizations must invest time and resources into finding appropriate security solutions that are capable of securing data in a remote environment. Fortunately, there’s a wide range of highly effective products and solutions like cloud access security brokers (CASB), and user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) that can quickly provide visibility and control, no matter how geographically dispersed a workforce is. 

Skimping on Cybersecurity Can Prove to Be Costly 

Enrico Benzoni, Marketing and Technology Alliances Director, DFLabsOpens a new window

In today’s world, those who don’t invest in cybersecurity will have to invest in recuperating the damage from not investing in cybersecurity. Whether you do or don’t take cybersecurity seriously, it’s a fact that it plays an intricate role in the heart of every high-functioning organization. And given the current pace at which cyber threats are evolving, companies need to continuously upgrade their processes, knowledge, resources, and technologies if they want to keep cyberattacks at bay. This means that everyone inside the organization should be wary of the potential perils cyber threats pose, which is why boosting cybersecurity awareness among all employees from rudimentary to above-average is a crucial asset in the battle against sophisticated cyber threats.

Learn More: How SMBs Can Stay on Top of the Evolving Threat Landscape

What’s Holding Organizations Back From Becoming More Secure? Users 

Chad Carter, VP of Sales North America at WALLIXOpens a new window

The most important piece of improving a company’s cybersecurity posture is through education and sharing knowledge. The most common types of data breaches are caused by human error. Training your employees and making them aware of the most common types of hacks (phishing emails, easy-to-hack passwords, logging off from your workstation, etc.) will greatly reduce your risk of a breach. 

The typical employee does not always naturally recognize certain emails as threats, especially as these threats become more sophisticated. They don’t realize that by not logging out of their device, it opens up the company to attacks. Training and awareness are a critical first step to improving your company’s security posture. 

Why Cybersecurity Should Become a Critical Part of Our Lives 

Anil Bhasin, Regional VP, India & SAARC, Palo Alto NetworksOpens a new window

The Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CSAM) continues to work towards raising awareness about the importance of cybersecurity globally, ensuring that every nation has the required resources to be safer and more secure online. With this year’s theme as ‘Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart’, each one of us needs to cooperate and work towards a cybercrime free world. We are focused on combating the ever-growing challenges of cyberattacks and security breaches, with our threat intelligence capability as well as by offering best-in-class solutions. Cybersecurity has become a critical part of our lives, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing us to accept the new normal, its importance has risen more than ever before, everywhere: in organizations irrespective of its size, government offices to the individual home user.

Enterprise Asset Management Shouldn’t Be an Afterthought 

Rohan Vaidya, Managing Director, CyberArkOpens a new window

With remote working becoming the new normal, it has become a necessity for cybersecurity experts to provide guidance on the threats that pose the maximum risk to organizations and employees as well as ways to tackle them. Simple tips for securing their digital profile – from picking strong passwords and safeguarding connected devices with multi-factor authentication (MFA), to securing home networks and keeping software up-to-date really go a long way. Businesses must also do their part to make the digital world a safer place for customers, employees and partners. This begins with protecting access – especially privileged access – to their critical enterprise assets.   

What’s your take on cybersecurity awareness? Do you plan to become #cybersecure? Let us know in the comment sections below!