Page 12 - GCN, Jun/July 2016

CYBERSECURITY SECURITY SOLUTIONS WORKING TOGETHER
“Having security devices and solutions work together, share contextual data, and communicate that throughout the whole security stack, that’s what we mean by enabling the organization.”
give the employee a much broader agility to access information from anywhere, and to give them more access to resources,” says Ken Dang, a Dell Security senior product marketing manager. “In other words, you can make security an enabler for that user to have a more productive contribution to the organization.”
The push to the cloud, for example, essentially creates an unbounded environment. That can result in a lot of security blind spots agencies will need to address. Most organizations, though, believe too much security would restrict government workers in what they could do. That leads them to say “No” to many of the required changes.
Putting more controls on data and restricting users from accessing certain information and resources won’t work for any migration to the cloud. Nor will it work for enabling such things as bring-your-own- device (BYOD). Furthermore, any changes that enhance security are often done through a siloed approach. This simply isn’t
effective for many of the current enterprise-wide security challenges.
SECURITY IN CONTEXT
Dell’s approach is to use “contextual” data, which describes a particular user’s access request at a particular time and place. The next step is to share that descriptive data between the various security devices and solutions used by the organization.
If someone is working in a remote location, for example, and wants
to sign in remotely, Dell’s security analytical engine knows that and can tell if they’re trying to get access from a high risk location or not. It’s
also sensitive to whether or not that person’s behavior matches what is known about him. It can feed that information into an identity type of solution that requires a second, higher level of authentication to ensure the person trying to dial in is indeed the person they say they are.
Once connected, the employee would be able to do things such as sync information through a fileshare application. When that information is passed through the network gate- way, a next generation firewall or inspection engine will examine the traffic to ensure everything is clean and the data isn’t being compro- mised with such things as a man-in- the-middle cyberattack.
All this provides for an adaptive, agile security posture, says Dang. Most of what organizations have in place today can’t drive that kind of intelligent, analytical security. “Having security devices and solutions be able to work together that way within a given security framework, and be able to share contextual data, and to communicate that throughout the whole security stack and multiple layers of security, that’s what we mean by enabling the organization,” he says.
INSPECTION IS ESSENTIAL
Another key element of modern security is the ability to inspect all
of the data packets that cross the enterprise network to ensure the data isn’t hiding any malware. That would be enough of a challenge even
Ask the Right Questions
Dell’s “Say Yes” approach to security is attractive, but not necessarily an easy sell to skeptical CIOs or chief information security officers who have heard many security-led pitches before. What do they need to know to be able to determine if it’s something that will work for them?
Dell has a set of questions they ask government executives, including:
• If one of your key executives logged in to the network from halfway around the world, would you even be aware?
• When faced with an audit, can you confidently report to the auditors the access of super users such as network administrators and others is under your control, that they’re not using shared passwords and that you can log their activities, even down to individual keystrokes?
• How confident are you that all of your cloud applications are being used only by your people?
• Does your network and identity infrastructure speak to each other, and are they fully aware of what each other does?
• Context awareness, single log-ons, integrated identity/network infrastructures are required for a wholly secure environment, beyond the basic elements. Can you do all of those things?
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