The RSA Conference always provides fascinating insights into the cybersecurity industry. This year’s conference, the 29th annual event in San Francisco February 24 – 28, 2020 was no exception. With more than 36,000 attendees, 704 speakers and 658 exhibitors gathered at the Moscone Center, there was a lot of information to digest. Read on to see our run down of the three most interesting trends in network security and what it means for our customers.
To the cloud and back
While movement to the cloud is helpful for some aspects of security, staying on premise is also trending. A large telecom we spoke to noted they are seeing increases in on-premises gateway security usage compared to declines in the same area last year.
The cloud is indeed popular. According to CSA’s Financial Services Stakeholder Platform (FSSP) Working Group, 91% of companies are using cloud services or plan to in the next six to nine months. This is up by 50% compared to stats from the same study four years ago. “Cloud adoption is accelerating within critical infrastructure industries where security is paramount, while organizations are embedding security into state-of-the-art cloud software development,” said John Yeoh, Global Vice President of Research at Cloud Security Alliance.
However, the cloud isn’t the magic bullet some hoped it would be. While companies are transferring to the cloud, they’re noticing that the complexity of their network is growing and security risks are increasing. According to FireMon’s 2020 State of Hybrid Cloud Security Report, 18% of C-suite respondents say their biggest worry is that they are losing the visibility they need to protect their cloud systems. Almost 60% commented they believe their cloud deployments had overtaken their ability to secure the network effectively.
“As companies around the world undergo digital transformations and migrate to the cloud, they need better visibility to reduce network complexity and strengthen security postures,” said Tim Woods, vice president of technology alliances at FireMon. “We know that adaptive and automated security tools would be a welcomed solution for their needs.”
We couldn’t agree more. That’s why we’ve ensured our network security virtualization platform works seamlessly with the existing security stack, intelligently orchestrates your security functions, but looks and acts like the cloud.
Cybersecurity remains a complex space
The number of vendors, product launches and announcements attests to the fact that cybersecurity is an overwhelming, confusing space. While browsing the halls it became obvious that it’s very challenging to pick out which products are worth your attention. Add to this the fact that techniques used by hackers are constantly evolving and network demands are becoming increasingly complex, it’s no wonder security architects want to stick with the status quo. This makes it all the more crucial for security companies to form alliances and invest in industry-wide research and events, so we can tackle these threats together.
That’s why we developed the Corsa Network Security Ecosystem Program to encourage interoperability between security vendors, sharing of information with industry organizations, and to help our customers get support and guidance from like-minded and local companies. We are also founding members of the Open Cybersecurity Alliance (OCA) who bring together organizations and individuals from around the world to develop open source security technologies which can freely exchange information, insights, analytics, and orchestrated responses.
Reduced security budgets
While the cybersecurity landscape is still as busy as ever, RSA attendance was quieter than expected. Organizers were hoping for approximately 45,000 attendees, but they found themselves with closer to 35,000. While the fault could lie with the threat of Coronavirus, it points to another reality – that many security teams have been forced to decrease in size. According to FireMon’s 2020 State of Hybrid Cloud Security Report, 69.5 % of organizations had less than 10-person security teams (versus 52 % in 2019). At the same time, smaller team sizes has become more common, with 45.2 % reporting a 5-person security team (compared to 28.5 % in 2019). While security teams may be decreasing in size, cybersecurity threats are only increasing in number and complexity. This means it is even more crucial to find cost-effective and easy-to-manage approaches to network security.
It’s one of the reasons we’ve developed a turnkey network security virtualization platform. Our intelligent orchestration distributes the workload, includes built-in health check mechanisms and incorporates the appropriate automation to have it all work together and be controlled by a single, user-friendly dashboard. As a result, security architects can deploy the solution in a matter of minutes, retain their existing firewall vendor and avoid the need for costly, time-intensive hardware upgrades. Meaning that a 5-person security team can still deal with complex cybersecurity threats on a high-performance network.
There were other buzz words during the RSA Conference – whose theme was “The Human Element” – phrases like artificial intelligence and zero trust. What stood out to us was that cybersecurity remains a confusing landscape where increasingly cash-strapped security teams need reliable, intelligent network security systems which they can deploy quickly and easily, and upgrade just as easily, because who knows what’s around the corner?