EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
Having passed the 12-month mark in this new era of remote and home working , IT teams remain focused on the challenge of ensuring effective IT security is in place . Faced with massive changes in work practices when offices closed and needing to ensure that customer service levels remained in place , IT teams had to juggle multiple priorities and deal with seemingly impossible deadlines .
When it came to security , the task was particularly acute . Users were suddenly working with insecure home networks and BYOD devices . Ways had to be quickly found to allow them to access the centralised resources that they needed to get their jobs done .
IT teams have also been forced to spend time managing user expectations . What was relatively easy to deliver to an office-based workforce is now more complex to achieve . As a result , users had to be informed about the support they would receive and given timelines within which it could be delivered . Now , with the longer-term effects of the pandemic becoming clearer , there is further work for the teams to complete . They must determine the best ways to achieve effective IT security in a world where remote working has become the new normal for large numbers of people .
Rethinking IT infrastructures
To effectively service large numbers of remote workers for an extended period of time , IT teams will continue to take a different strategy when it comes to security .
For the past 30 years , networks have been connecting users to applications in the data center , which was surrounded by a secure perimeter that kept applications and data safe from outside attackers .
Now , with users connecting remotely and greater use of cloud-based resources , this approach is no longer able to solve the fundamental challenges of security and is actually adding complexity and cost .
Increasing numbers of organisations are instead adopting a different approach to the challenge . Dubbed Secure Access Service Edge ( SASE ), the approach has been identified by research firm Gartner as an effective way of achieving strong security for remote and dispersed workforces .
SASE places an emphasis on securing the traffic between the user and the application . In other words , it ’ s the journey and not just the destination that is most important . With the SASE model , digital businesses must provide security at all times , regardless of the location of the user in question .
SASE is being augmented by a second strategy called zero trust . Under this approach , users and devices must be identified before being allowed access to applications and data . This removes the need for a secure perimeter and makes sense in the current home working environment .
Zero trust also enables enterprises to truly isolate and segment who has access to what . This means no more shared spaces , as every access must be validated before it is enabled . This is done by simply bringing the user and the application together only for that particular communication and nothing further .
During the coming months , organisations that embrace the strategies of SASE and zero trust will be able to build a single way of working and be better prepared to cope with the ever-increasing set of events that can challenge business operations .
Staff can have secure access to the resources they need but without many of the restrictions encountered during the depths of the pandemic shutdowns . This means that IT security teams will have succeeded in re-architecting their environments for the new way of working while meeting the changed expectations of their users . p
STEVE SINGER , REGIONAL VICE
PRESIDENT AND COUNTRY MANAGER – AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND AT ZSCALER
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