The risk of being an early adopter

SEP2’s clients are often at the bleeding edge of technology. They are keen to get the benefits of early adoption of tech, but in doing so may be exposing themselves to cyber security threats.

When technology is at the bleeding edge, it may not have been fully risk-assessed. This usually only comes months or even years down the line, when there is sufficient data to be able to analyse and predict. Also, the excitement inherent in finding and embracing something new can lead to the process being short-circuited.

It is therefore vital that your cyber-security specialist is as close to this bleeding edge as you are.

Secure Cloud Infrastructure

Businesses and individuals are increasingly comfortable with the idea of working and developing in the cloud. It is no longer an attractive option – for many small, medium or enterprise organisations it is de rigueur.

However, the number of records being stolen or leaked from cloud storage annually is in the hundreds of millions. When implementing cloud operational environments, security experts must work ever harder to find risks in the architecture, configuration and implementation.

Common examples of risks to cloud-based infrastructures are as follows:

Identity protection for SaaS (Software as a Service) applications

There is a heightened threat posed by the sheer quantity of remotely stored personal data that is often required to access SAAS applications. Each packet of data represents a security risk, but identity threat represents over 90% of all SaaS data breaches. We work with a number of tech partners that have solutions to remove such threats. One of these is Check Point; their CloudGuard SaaS covers applications such as Office 365, OneDrive, DropBox and many others. The Check Point Identity Protection engine integrates with any Identity provider and SaaS provider supporting the SAML 2.0 protocol.

Securing your IaaS (Infrastructure As A Service) environment

IaaS environments are now in the mainstream. Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud are all names that we recognise. However, there are significant risks to consider, especially when uploading information into IAAS environments. Organisations can make the mistake of using unencrypted data when moving data between on-premises resources and their IaaS environment. Other risks come from misconfiguring cloud resources. SEP2 provide the very best vendor solutions for such risks and have experts locally to ensure any issues can be addressed.

Responding to threats in Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is a hugely popular platform, with an installation base that continues to grow year on year. There are solutions such as 365 Defender available from Microsoft themselves. Defender is a threat protection solution that adds a layer of protection to your devices, identity, apps and data.

Nevertheless, there are no guarantees with OEM solutions, and you can be sure that cyber criminals are always working hard on finding infrastructure gaps.

Third-party solutions will invariably offer best in class solutions. An example of this is third-party phishing solutions, which have been proven to offer the best detection and capture rates.

We recommend a comprehensive strategy for cyber security in order to strengthen your security posture. In carrying out this review, we will also recommend best-in-class solutions that mean you can be confident about the security of your 365 platform.

Containerisation

Containerisation is an emerging trend in development circles; it offers an alternative (or companion) to virtualisation. However, as with any new approach, it is vital that the code is being protected.

Containerisation refers to the process of packaging software code (including its dependencies) so that, regardless of infrastructure, the code can work consistently.

Containerisation has a number of benefits. Its adoption leads to economies of scale, as well as allowing software developers to create and deploy applications more quickly and more securely. In effect, it enables the software to be written once but deployed anywhere.

However, containerisation has inherent risks too. An efficient system will be built to share application layers across different containers. Unfortunately, this increases the risk of security breaches across containers.

The pursuit of efficiency may also lead to the use of an Operating System that is common to multiple containers.  The problem here is that any threat to the OS could compromise all associated containers. Reciprocally, a container breach would have a multiplier effect on a shared OS.

In Conclusion

There are a couple of themes worth dwelling on whenever new tech areas are being implemented. The first of these is that native solutions are not necessarily the best. If you want true cyber expertise, go to the experts. The second is that efficiencies often lead to a greater threat. What may be cost-effective in the short term, could lead to costly risks further down the line.

SEP2 pride themselves on being Tech Driven and People Powered. This is because not only do we curate the world’s best cyber security solutions, but we employ brilliant technicians to ensure that they are deployed and supported expertly.

We are always learning about the very latest tech innovations. We also work closely with our vendors and customers to ensure that we can consult on the very latest in emerging trends. We are passionate about being at the bleeding edge, so you can be confident that we will ensure the security of your operation.

We provide a combination of off-the-shelf and bespoke services to ensure your security. We are only ever a phone call or email away. If brand new, cutting edge tech is your domain, then you can be sure that we will be a tenacious security partner who is with you every step of the way.