{"id":4861,"date":"2022-12-21T11:55:46","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T16:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/network-monitoring\/?p=4861"},"modified":"2022-12-21T13:27:35","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T18:27:35","slug":"security-and-networking-steps-toward-convergence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/network-monitoring\/security-and-networking-steps-toward-convergence\/","title":{"rendered":"Security and Networking: Steps Toward Convergence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Convergence\"<\/p>\n

As part of Solutions Review\u2019s Premium Content Series\u2014a collection of contributed columns written by industry experts in maturing software categories\u2014 Patrick Ostiguy of Accedian<\/a> lays out the path toward the convergence of cybersecurity and networking in organizations.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"SROrganizations today struggle with a lack of control over the end-user experience and security, as well as a dearth of visibility when it comes to their corporate networks. When employees started working remotely, companies became more dispersed, and for many of them, this shift has become permanent. Forrester Research estimates that just 30 percent of businesses will accept a total return to the traditional office setting following the pandemic.<\/p>\n

In parallel, the sophistication of hacker attacks against this extended network surface has increased. The means of visibility continues to be much the same, even as these trends are occurring. Not just from a technological standpoint but also from an organizational and cultural one, there is an urgent need to change how things are done. The conventional barriers between networking and security functions must be removed for this change to be successful.<\/p>\n

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How the Networking and Security Landscape has Changed\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The issue isn\u2019t that visibility is worse than it used to be; rather, it has remained constant while everything else has changed, including the adoption of work-from-home (WFH) and the shift to the cloud. Because there is no longer a perimeter, perimeter defense strategies are ineffective. Organizations still need endpoint and perimeter security, but they are insufficient, given the expanding attack surface. Other technologies must be used in conjunction with them. Rather than only trying to block attackers at the entry point, new technologies must be used to cover distributed environments, follow and record intruders if and after they penetrate, and also account for insider threats.<\/p>\n

Cyber-attacks are more frequent and sophisticated these days. Hackers are taking advantage of technological flaws, and once they are inside a network, it may take months to detect them. The cost of a breach increases with the amount of time between the breach and detection. And these expenses keep rising. The average cost of a breach reached a new high of $4.35 million in 2022, up 13 percent from 2020, according to IBM\u2019s Cost of a Data Breach Report.<\/p>\n

Uniting Networking and Security for Better Visibility<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Organizations can only detect and thwart today\u2019s attacks with insight into the network itself, yet most security teams lack visibility into and easy access to the network. Your security operations team needs a secure network to fend off attacks, while the network operations team wants dependable, trouble-free network performance. End-users are just looking for a no-hassle experience.<\/p>\n

How will you meet these many needs? Cyber-attackers must traverse the network somehow, that is one place they cannot work around and probably the best place to catch them; if network operations and security teams work in silos and use different tools, chances are they might not detect them. It is a lengthy process, but the two teams must converge. In the past, security and networking were two distinct, compartmentalized fields. It won’t be possible to change this scenario overnight. Though it\u2019s not always the case that they dislike working together, both teams are typically adamant about doing things their own way. These are occasionally teams from other organizations that have been integrated through acquisition.<\/p>\n

Such compartmentalization persists for a few reasons:<\/p>\n