Security

COVID-19: Emerge stronger with adaptive security

June 3, 2020

Security challenges

Everything has changed. For C-suite executives, daily conversations about operations and profits now include business continuity, safety, security and resilience. Working from home has opened up new attack vectors and workforce issues—including those from insider threats. Three challenges organizations face are how to:

Outmaneuver future uncertainty: Rethink culture, collaborative practices, and the technology necessary to enable distributed working environments at scale.
Outwit cybercriminals: Malicious threat actors are taking advantage as organizations reconfigure their vulnerable supply chains, offer more digital experiences, and meet the growing demands of a remote workforce.
Outstep previous performance: Security leaders must adapt to service new business priorities and evolve how they detect, defend and recover from threats in the face of unprecedented demands.

Security leaders are in pole position to act as key influencers to make the practical changes that keep their organizations safe and secure—and help people adopt new ways of working that apply adaptive security in the long term.

Securing the supply chain

Act now

As organizations stabilize their current operations, security leaders can put the right controls in place to create a safe and secure working environment to achieve business continuity for their enterprise. Here are four elements of adaptive security which apply now:

1. Secure mindset

Prioritize the human factor

Security leaders continue to play a role in maintaining the health and well-being of the workforce, which is essential for the smooth running of the enterprise and helps to mitigate risks to the larger community.

2. Secure network access

Protect the company infrastructure

Security leaders can inform employees about known vulnerabilities and make sure their teams are diligent when it comes to testing and threat intelligence.

3. Secure work environments

Be brilliant at the basics

With workforces now remote, security leaders need to shift the information security focus from an enterprise infrastructure to a virtual and cloud environment.

4. Secure collaboration

Provide the tools and the teams to tackle risk

Security leaders are well-placed to evaluate and promote solutions that mean distributed teams can connect and collaborate safely, securely and effectively—helping their organizations to create better employee experiences while making them more productive.

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Emerge stronger

Adaptive security offers organizations a secure and smooth experience to achieve business continuity. Security leaders can reinvent access by using cloud-based solutions to meet the increased demand for fast, frictionless, and secure remote access to enterprise data and applications. The use of a zero trust framework for authentication helps to protect remote access using strong authentication.

A zero-trust framework for authentication helps protect remote access using a strong authentication that includes multifactor and adaptive authentication, fraud prevention, identity proofing, behavioral analytics and biometrics, and device telemetry.

Adaptive Security — A Zero-Trust Model

Security practices that serve today's needs, as well as the future's:

Think "anytime, anywhere"
Secure all users, devices, and network traffic consistently with the same degree of effectiveness, regardless of where they are based. Remember that secure network access and applications are just as fast with security as they are without—if not faster.

Be transparent
Give users access to what they need when they need it. Make these changes transparent to them—without asking them to “jump through hoops” to do their job effectively.

Bring calm and confidence
Security leaders can be the catalyst for change, using empathy and compassion to deliver a more agile response. Employing adaptive security creates confidence—such as using expanding access to more remote users.

Where possible, simplify
Consider managed services and automate where it makes sense. Security event response, tool deployment, and rule management can benefit from limited human intervention.

Build for resilience
As organizations look to emerge stronger, business continuity and crisis management plans must be fit for purpose. Engage with business leaders to plan, prepare and practice for greater cybersecurity resilience, backed by the right resources and investments.

Accenture believes a multi-dimensional crisis management strategy, with many work streams and teams that collaborate closely, often on a daily basis, is the answer to security resilience—and can help to protect people from harm.