While working on my recent “mini-series” of blog posts about endpoint security and The Forrester Wave™: Endpoint Security Suites, Q4 2016 report, much world news was focused on borders. And much of that coverage focused on three questions that are interestingly (to me, at least) analogous to questions cybersecurity decision-makers must ask and answer all the time.

Here’s my take on those questions as they apply most directly to cybersecurity.

  • How best to protect our perimeters and those who live within them?
  • How best to decide who and what gets through those perimeters, and who and what does not?
  • How best to defend our enterprise resources from successful threats, especially those that arise from within?

Then, on Valentine’s Day, poetically enough, Computerworld published an article. The headline: “Forget the network perimeter, say security vendors.” The article features BeyondCorp, “a new model for network security that Google proposed back in 2014,” according to the piece.

A centerpiece of this model? It “takes the focus away from the network perimeter and puts it on devices and users,” the article said.

Bingo.

From the perimeter to the personal

We at Ivanti are big believers in this approach to enterprise cybersecurity. It was in fact a primary driver of the acquisitions and mergers that led to the very formation of our company.

Specifically, we believe security is a foundational element of modern, successful, effective enterprise IT. Further, we believe such security requires defense in depth—the ability to prevent, detect, and remediate even the most sophisticated threats. Not surprisingly, these three requirements are echoed in the Forrester report, and closely aligned with the Center for Internet Security’s top five Critical Security Controls. We also believe IT security of “devices and users,” and of the information and resources those users need to do their jobs, can be improved without hobbling user productivity or compromising critical business processes.

Success with this approach relies on more than just shiny new technologies. It also requires effective processes, supportive leadership, and frequent user education. Perhaps more important than any of these, however, it requires looking at each user and every device they use as a kind of “personal perimeter.” Each personal perimeter must be effectively consistently protected, even as that user moves from location to location or switches among multiple devices. And those personal perimeters must be interconnected to maximize protection of the enterprise as a whole.

Get personal with Ivanti

If you believe what we believe about modern cybersecurity and personal perimeters, we would love the opportunity to help you translate those shared beliefs into better security for your enterprise. Download the Forrester report, to see more of what it has to say about the evolution of security and the strengths of Ivanti’s solutions. Then, check out our solutions for patch management, ransomware and malware protection, access rights management, application control, and other critical elements of security management. Then, contact us, and let’s get started on securing the personal perimeters populating your enterprise.

Layered security is the whole endpoint

Be sure to check out the other posts in this series: