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EDITOR’S QUESTION
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FADY YOUNES,
CYBERSECURITY DIRECTOR –
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA, CISCO
N
etwork borders are rapidly being
eroded by the need to enable
anyone, anywhere to connect to
anything, at any time. Employees, partners,
and customers are using mobile devices
and applications to connect from homes,
hotels, airport Internet kiosks, and local
coffee shops, collaborating through mobile
platforms, increasing business efficiency,
productivity and flexibility.
However, enhanced communication
also increases the risk of losing sensitive
information, such as intellectual property
and customer data, due to innocent or
malicious activities.
Recently, multiple data loss incidents
affecting large organisations have made
headlines – Equifax, Uber, Yahoo – and this
shows that the challenge is the struggle
between the relentless attackers and the
tireless defenders does not always seem to
be evenly balanced. Attackers have unlimited
resources and an unlimited number of
tries to conduct attacks. They only need
one to succeed to get what they want. The
defenders, on the other hand, have limited
time and resources and need to have
complete visibility of their infrastructure and
data and the potential ways in.
It does not seem to be a comfortable
equation, especially as criminals tend to be
much more agile than their targets. Every
organisation has something valuable to
protect and adversaries who want to get
their hands on it. Organisations need to be
able to understand who wants access to the
network, what type of device is being used,
where they are located, and what services
they want to access which is why Cisco offers
a threat centric integrated architecture
www.intelligentcio.com
which protects the customers across network,
endpoint and cloud.
In just three years, an estimated 50 billion
new devices will be connected presenting
companies with a significant opportunity,
if they can seize this digital revolution with
a holistic approach to cybersecurity. The
proliferation of devices and applications are
creating many new entry points for threats
while generating a flood of traffic, requiring
organisations to rethink data security.
Virtualisation, cloud, and software defined
networking (SDN) increase security complexity,
while new technologies such as microservices,
containers and APIs increase the opportunity
for data theft. Traditional perimeter methods
for security are no longer sufficient to protect
dynamic applications and workloads.
The Cisco Annual Cybersecurity Report found
that 80% of data breaches originate from
third parties. To reduce risk, organisations
must foster a value chain where trust is
not implicit, and security is everyone’s
responsibility. Keeping the difference
between responsibility and accountability in
mind, everyone in the company needs to be
responsible for cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity is finally becoming a top-
of-mind business objective for many with
many organisations making the board
hold accountability, which makes sense
considering a large security breach/incident
doesn’t only affect finances and productivity
but can severely damage customers’ trust
towards the brand.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound
of cure, so the saying goes. When it comes
to protecting your organisation against
the imminent threat of a cyberattack, it’s
essential to factor in both. Adversaries
are working hard to create data incidents,
so we’re working harder to build secure,
intelligent networks to enable positive
customer outcomes. n
INTELLIGENTCIO
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