Ram Narayanan, Country Manager, Check Point Software Technologies Middle East, explains how he thinks technology will further enhance remote working.
The pandemic has reshaped our entire working culture. The changes were global, rapid and widespread, compressing several years’ worth of IT changes into just a few weeks. When businesses across the globe were plunged into rapid remote working, users adapted quickly to this model. So did IT. Businesses were able to continue doing business while employee productivity actually increased.
As organisations scrambled to restructure their network and security environments overnight, the move to the cloud and Digital Transformation efforts were accelerated. This rapid move resulted in security gaps and new opportunities for criminals. Organisations now look to close security gaps and secure their networks, from employees’ home PCs and mobiles to the enterprise data centre and cloud, with a holistic, end-to-end security architecture.
However, cybersecurity technology has kept constant pace with the rapid shift in the threat landscape, especially during the pandemic and subsequent move to remote work. With secure remote access being a priority for any organisation, technologies like the SD-WAN have proved popular with businesses looking to secure a remote workforce. By combining networking and security solutions in a single appliance, organisations can move this functionality to the network edge, removing the centralisation of traditional, perimeter-focused networks.
With a move to the cloud and the emergence of cloud security services, SD-WAN has converged and become what is defined as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). It is an architectural model that combines an array of security capabilities including WAN, firewalls, secure gateways and Zero Trust network access, which allow users to access applications with the best possible user experience and the highest level of security, all depending on the user’s identity.
When organisations adopt SASE, they distribute user access to corporate resources instead of consolidating them in one place. This is the reason why, instead of routing traffic from branch offices and remote users to the data centre, where the Internet egress point was typically located, SASE recommends that users and branches should all have a direct Internet breakout, a shift to a decentralised architecture.
For any organisation to truly benefit from security solutions, it needs the ability to have visibility into the network’s environment. Prior to the Coronavirus pandemic, it was a challenge to gain visibility into network environments and remote working has amplified this challenge. In the past, organisations were able to rely on security operations centres (SOCs), endpoint detection and response (EDR), security information and event management (SIEM) technologies and others. Yet traditional tools may not be enough to combat the emerging threats.
Having said that, as remote working operations and remote security improve, 91% of Information Technology leaders expect that SASE will crucially simplify security and management. Among organisations that have implemented SASE, 86% report seeing security improvements. SASE flexibility also makes it easy for businesses to scale up their security infrastructure as they grow.
No organisation, irrespective of size, is immune from a cyberattack. Organisations must strive to become ‘secure by design’ and have a strong cybersecurity plan; otherwise plan to fail.