Networks are currently undergoing more dramatic change than at any time in the past thirty years. Organisations are simultaneously wrestling with issues such as BYOD, IoT, virtualization, SDN, cloud, the proliferation of applications, Big Data, and the expectations of the next generation of employees to blend their work and their personal lives on a single device of their choosing, with instant access to any data at any time from any location!
The attack surface that organisations need to be concerned with has exponentially increased.
The problem is compounded by the proliferation of point security products embedded across the distributed network. The tendency as our networks become more complicated is to add new security devices to an already overburdened wiring closet. However, siloed security solutions with separate management interfaces and no meaningful way to gather or share threat information with other devices on your network are only marginally useful. The truth is, many new solutions never actually get fully deployed because there simply isn’t enough manpower to assign to installing, managing, optimising, and updating another complicated device.
The response to increasingly complicated networked environments needs to be simplicity.
1. Segmentation
- Networks need to be intelligently segmented into functional security zones. End to end segmentation, from IoT to the cloud, and across physical and virtual environments, provides deep visibility into traffic that moves laterally across the distributed network, limits the spread of malware, and allows for the identification and quarantining of infected devices.
2. Collaborative intelligence
- Local and global threat intelligence needs to be shared between security devices, and a coordinated response between devices needs to be orchestrated centrally.
3. Universal policy
- A centralised security policy engine that determines trust levels between network segments, collects real time threat information, establishes a unified security policy, and distributes appropriate orchestrated policy enforcement.
ROI vs Complex integration of ‘best of breed’?
We are technology and vendor agnostic and will always recommend the best solution set to clients, however the idea that organisations must spend time and money integrating technologies from different vendors doesn’t really make any sense from a ROI perspective. Frequent examples include integrating a client’s firewalls with their wireless system before the firewall knows who the WiFi users are, or having firewalls from one vendor and an endpoint solution from another where the firewall has no idea whether the endpoint is trusted or secured, offer attackers an easy route to impersonate users and subvert perimeter controls.
As strategic consultants, focused on business risk and profitability, we are aware that no organisation, whether government or large enterprise, has unlimited funds to spend on security technology. Organisations that are least likely to be compromised and those that identify attacks more quickly, have a simple, integrated approach to core security infrastructure and put their effort into the same areas as the attackers i.e. on the advanced, bespoke and attack controls to protect their business.
It’s impossible for most organisations to separate ROI from security. But with the recent development of concepts such as the Security Fabric by Fortinet, the effort and resources invested in integrating standard controls from multiple vendors may simply be better spent on activities to deliver a more comprehensive defence against advanced attacks.
The Fortinet Security Fabric
Fortinet’s Security Fabric integrates technologies for the endpoint, access layer, network, applications, data center, content, and cloud into a single collaborative security solution that can be orchestrated through a single management interface. It is based on five key principles:
- Scalability. The Fortinet Security Fabric protects the Enterprise from IoT to the Cloud.
- Awareness. The Fabric behaves as a single entity from a Policy and Logging perspective, enabling end-to-end Segmentation in order to reduce the risk from advanced threats.
- Secure. Global and Local threat intelligence and mitigation information can be shared across individual products to decrease Time to Protect.
- Actionable. Big Data cloud systems correlate threat information and network data to deliver Actionable Threat Intelligence in real time.
- Open. Well-defined, open APIs allow leading technology partners to become part of the fabric, allowing to you maximise your existing investment in security technologies.
Security Fabric tailored by experts
Fortinet named Infosec Partners as their first ever Partner of Excellence UK and one of the first in the world. This accolade was awarded in recognition of Infosec Partners’ expert capability in implementing, supporting the entire portfolio of Fortinet solutions, and the ability to integrate Fortinet solutions with solutions from any other security vendor. But it’s our ability to provide full-spectrum cybersecurity expertise (from risk and strategy, to certification and incident management) which helps us ensure that your Security Fabric implementation, fits your organisation perfectly.
Contact us today for more information on the Security Fabric and for your free consultation:
+44 (0)1256 893662
