Of all the challenges facing chief information officers (CIOs) and their IT teams today, one of the most significant is a growing need for borderless security.
While, historically, firewalls and other perimeter security measures were used to secure centralised applications and data, they are no longer sufficient. With increasing IT resources shifting to cloud-based platforms and being accessed remotely, a new approach to security is required.
The need for a rethink of security strategies is also being prompted by an ongoing increase in the use of mobile devices. Where once staff would have predominantly used PCs connected to a local area network (LAN), they are now just as likely to access resources from anywhere, using a laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
“The number of assets within organizations that need to be secured is constantly growing,” says Ben Wong, director for channel and alliances APJ at BeyondTrust. “Managing those assets, particularly when they are outside traditional security boarders, is an increasing challenge.”
For many organizations, the requirement for borderless security is also being driven by a shift in the way they interact with their customers. Rather than transactions being undertaken in a physical store or facility, they are increasingly being completed online. This, in turn, changes the way security needs to be approached to ensure systems and critical asset such as databases remain protected from attack or misuse.
A further driver for borderless security has been the widespread shift to hybrid work practices. Following the Covid-19 lockdowns, staff within many organizations have opted for a mix of home and office work. This means security teams must ensure they can gain secure remote access to the resources they require regardless of their physical location.
“There has been a long-term mindset within many organizations to create a strong buffer between their locally managed network and the public internet,” says Mel Migriño, chairman and president of WiSAP & executive committee member of the Asean CIO Association.
“However increasingly many are realizing that to achieve ongoing growth will require a more borderless approach to their security.”
The role of digital identity
In a borderless world, achieving effective security relies on managing access to digital assets. Increasingly, this is being achieved through the use of digital identities. Users and devices must prove their identity to confirm they are authorized to access the resources they seek.
This approach allows an organization to limit access within a gated timeframe, to only the resources each user specifically requires to complete their role. This means that, even if their identity is later compromised, the stolen credentials will not allow an unauthorized party to have wholesale access to the organization’s entire network and critical assets.
“For many years passwords were seen as the most appropriate way to limit access to digital assets, however this has now changed,” says Johnny Kho, president of the Association of Information Security Professionals. “Today, multi-factor authentication is now standard within many organizations as it significantly improves the level of security.”
Didi Nurcahya, member of APTIKNAS and partner at Dtechcorp, says authentication and identity are now at the heart of effective digital security.
“For many organizations, identity is now effectively the new perimeter,” he says. “The focus must therefore shift to protecting identities and ensuring authorized and secure access to resources.”
The need for borderless security will continue to grow as organizations become increasingly interconnected. Secure provision and management of digital identities will be vital to ensure that access to resources is restricted to authorized parties and secure from cyberthreats.
Those organizations that successfully design, deploy, and manage a robust borderless security infrastructure will be best placed to flourish in this new dispersed operating environment.
Watch the full fireside chat where Ben Wong, Mel Migriño, Johnny Kho, and Didi Nurcahy gathered to discuss why borderless security is becoming important in the interconnected work.
