Businesses Are Looking for

BUSINESSES ARE LOOKING FOR SAFER STRATEGIES TO BE ONLINE

Rohit Bhargava, the Practice Head for Cloud and Security for Cloud Box Technologies, speaks about the evolving security threat vectors in the region and how companies can mitigate those risks

Can you tell us about the security threat landscape in the region? How has it evolved over the months?

Well much of the world we live in is driven by online engagements. There are more transactions happening online and people are collaborating over the internet. This introduces a very big attack vector. Because of this, what is happening today is that most of the people are concerned about protecting their digital assets and protecting their identity. This is introducing a lot of risk in their environment. As a result what we have seen is that businesses are trying to be a little more proactive in their approach of protecting data and users. Thus, they are talking to their employees and making sure the basics of the security is taken care.

There are four categories of attacks primarily that we have seen. We see denial of services - a very common attack vector. Then we have man in the middle phishing and malware. We also see a lot of attacks happening through emails and not to forget the attacks which are emanating from social engineering. So this is taking the benefit of the current situation and we see all these different digital channels are being used to propagate such kind of attacks. So as a result, businesses are looking for safer strategies to be online and if you look at the entire threat landscape over the past few months, you would see cyber breaches and cyber crimes are on a rise exponentially.

How is Cloudbox equipped to handle those challenges?

Well, that's an interesting thing because work from home was always there. However, the percentage of users sitting at home and working have increased. But what we have seen traditionally is people who are working from home, lack complete skill set to be able to manage their endpoint devices. So as a result they are facing a lot of operational hassles. We talk to customers day in and day out and they tell us that managing the workforce remotely is also a challenge. They want to make sure proper monitoring tools are also put in place. But what we do differently as Cloudbox is our threat hunting proposition to protect the workforce. the rescue here. We measure not only the employee productivity, but at the same time we focus on the endpoint protection - the machines and the devices that they are using. This helps us in an overall 360 degree aproach keeping data protection strategy at the center. So whether it is data in motion, data in use, or even data which is being continuously accessed, all these are protected.

How has ransomware evolved during this period?

Ransomware has evolved drastically - it's a known attack vector and it's been doing a lot of damage to the society overall. But what we have seen interestingly is it's not just the encryption of the data and then taking the ransom from it. It's the data exfiltration and the threat of data being released online on the internet. That's something which is posing a lot of threat to the companies and corporate employees, who are very concerned that their identity and their privacy is not compromised.

Some instances where we have seen ransomware using a shared code or a shared infrastructure is to make the attack little more directed. They do this not just focusing on one machine but on a set of machines on the network. So this makes the attack a little more complex. At Cloudbox, we have learnt all these attack vectors and we learn every day from the recent attacks that are happening everywhere.

Our continuous solution of managed services is offered through a 24x7x365 monitoring and measuring initiative. We want to make sure that our managed services offer customers data that is accessible, that is secure, and that is available all the time. All of our services are also making sure that there is a sense of security awareness to the users of the network and this makes it sure that we have a protection from the users as well as from the devices.

How are companies overcoming digital security and privacy challenges at this time?

Companies are adopting a multi-faceted approach. There is no one solution to such a kind of environment. There is a big data sprawl across various digital channels and devices. This data sprawl invites attacks to happen easily. If it's not today, it will be tomorrow. But that requires a careful consideration overall. We see that companies are using attribute based access control. This kind of control enables dynamic and effective way of managing the data.

Companies are also using identity access and management. These kinds of tools helps engage and keeps a proper balance between customer experience and the privacy. However, previous data privacy has been become a product. Customers' identities are being sold online - so that's where this request for a centralised identity as a service solution and the cloud is playing a bigger part.

So companies who have got technology at the center of their strategy, their business planning strategy have become resilient to such a kind of pandemic. We increasingly think that these kind of business planning and these kind of customers who have technology centered around would sustain their business. There is an inherent culture of cyber hygiene that can come if the companies have proper technology investment towards digital transformation.

Bear in mind, technology digital transformation, smart initiatives, paperless initiatives, and so on, are all different ways through which companies can get work done efficiently. But it can also become little more compliant to these changing internet laws and data privacy laws.

What are the cyber security trends for 2021?

Well among the big trend setters, everybody is talking about cloud, AI, and 5G. I feel all these three technologies are tied up into three specific areas: automation, on-demand services, and digital transformation. All these three technologies are very rampant across all the verticals. But if you talk about cyber security, there's a different thing happening altogether. Customers from SMB to enterprise are looking at identity based systems. I see an increasing demand for password management tools. I see an increasing demand for password less multi-factor authentication and this is driving a lot of requirements.