Simplicity

Simplicity = Greater Security

Complexity has been a growing problem for cybersecurity for years. As the threat environment has grown more sophisticated, organizations have typically responded by adding new tools to their security stack, often to the point where complexity is increasing risk, instead of reducing it.

Research from Palo Alto Networks indicates that large organizations and enterprises are using more than 130 tools on average, and even mid-size companies are using 50 to 60 tools. There has also been a critical skills shortage in cybersecurity for years. Given the shortage of security experts and the surplus of tools and threats, organizations must simplify security tasking wherever they can.

There are technologies and services available to make the burden more bearable, including managed services, cloud solutions, and automated assessment and prevention technologies. Simple strategic concepts are needed. Protect the data, use encryption. Define the perimeter based on data, not the network edges. Enable logging and have network visibility. Role based access control and least privilege. Observe and enforce security policies. Asset management and default configuration removal.

Any security solution must combine state-of-the-art capabilities with the deployment and management simplicity needed to ensure you can consistently take full advantage of all the protections the solution offers. Ideal solutions will do the following:

Step 1: Shrink the stack
Shrink the number of tools by working with fewer vendors.

Step 2: Integrate
Integrate the stack components (usually via APIs).

Step 3: Automate
Any processes that are repetitious should automated.

Step 4: Educate users
Awareness is critical in cybersecurity.

As solutions go in cyber simplicity, platforms are better than point products. Managed services are better than platforms. The key is to take a less-is-more approach. By doing so, there is the opportunity to be smarter and more agile while leveraging best practice to protect organizations, customers, employees and partners.

Simplicity is a strategy, and it works.