Why Fortify with Modern Security and Zero Trust?
Thu, 06 Oct 2022 20:17:13 -0000
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Today’s infrastructure landscape is rapidly changing. Customers’ data is scattered — across cloud, multi-cloud, core datacenter, and edge. And with that comes a more challenging threat landscape. The security provisions you deployed yesterday may not be ready for today’s security reality. Cyberattacks can come from anywhere — inside and outside of your organization. This means that you must have a comprehensive and continuous security strategy that is cyber resilient and enables zero trust principles.
Why bother with a comprehensive approach like zero trust?
Cyber threats are real. And the damage caused by attacks can be costly and devastating. Likewise, regulatory pressures (from a compliance, financial, and liability perspective) that have come about as a result of these attacks are growing.
This, combined with the complexity of the modern IT infrastructure and the sophistication of today’s threat landscape, requires a trust model that validates at every point in the IT environment before permissions are granted.
Zero trust is an approach to security that assumes that every part of your infrastructure is at risk — requiring continuous verification and validation. While the purpose of this blog is not to talk in depth about what zero trust is, we do want to explain its validity given today’s threat landscape and explain how Dell Technologies’ cyber-resilient architecture is the foundation for the critical elements of a zero-trust environment.
Learn more about how Dell provides broad coverage across these pillars in our Zero trust architecture infographic.
You might be wondering, why does zero trust have so many categories? The simple answer is that you need as complete and continuous coverage as possible across your infrastructure if you want your security efforts to be successful. For example, your organization might do encryption really well. But this doesn’t matter if you don’t have strong multifactor authentication to identify the users of that encrypted data. Your organization is only as secure as your weakest link, which is why focusing on all seven pillars is your best defense in combating threats.
While the ultimate goal is to keep attacks from coming in at all, rejecting them at the point of entry, that’s not always possible. The zero-trust model requires more refined validation at key intersections for verified trust, optimizing least privilege without impacting workload efficiency. However, if a breach does occur, the sphere in which they could do damage should be minimized, along with an enhanced ability to detect and remediate immediately. Dell Technologies’ cyber-resilient architecture, enhanced over many years, is the foundation for the critical elements of a zero-trust environment.
What is the value of having a cyber-resilient architecture?
In simple terms, cyber resiliency within your infrastructure is what helps minimize the exposure to attacks. Dell Technologies solutions are hardened and designed to help you protect, detect, and recover from cyberattacks.
Dell, of course, has been talking about its cyber-resilient architecture for a long time. What’s changed now, however, is that given the emerging threat landscape, we can see how zero trust goes hand in hand with a cyber-resilient architecture. And it’s why we’re continually making enhancements to our cyber-resilient architecture: to provide even greater visibility, risk reduction, and resilience — so that your infrastructure intrinsically supports a zero-trust approach.
We’ll explore cyber resiliency in more detail in a later blog. For now, you can find additional information about Dell’s cyber-resilient architecture in our infographic and video.
Why partner with Dell?
Dell creates the products and features to help you meet your zero-trust goals. We also watch the regulatory landscape to make sure that our solutions meet industry standards and exceed capabilities in the area of security. We do this through:
Processes: Delivering a cyber-resilient architecture requires security awareness and discipline at each stage of development. The Dell Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL), for example, outlines the set of activities required throughout the product lifecycle to promptly build security resiliency and consistent security capabilities into our products and respond to any security vulnerability.
Additional security solutions: In addition to embedding layered security into our products, we provide standalone security solutions focused on specific areas, like data protection. If data does get compromised, you want a backup system that enables business continuity and provides assurance that the backup itself hasn’t been compromised. Offerings like Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery and CyberVault enable a robust backup, including the use of Airgap and CyberSense to detect anomalies and mitigate potential problems that could compromise your data.
Simplification: Security controls are useless if they’re not being used. While Dell provides you with sophisticated security controls, we’ve also significantly simplified their use and deployment. Look for more information about “security complexity” in a later blog.
Supply chain security: At Dell, we’re also focused on personnel, operational, and supplier provisions for supply chain security. We have technologies and programs in place, like Secured Component verification that enable the verification of your components from the factory to your site.
Regulatory certifications: We closely monitor regulatory requirements around the world — and make sure our solutions contain the certifications (FIPS, USGv6, Common Criteria, and others) that matter to you. With this focus, we’re able to provide security controls that match emerging regulatory requirements, helping to keep your business secure and compliant.
This is just a glimpse of what Dell Technologies is doing in this space. As Cybersecurity Awareness month kicks off, please take time to read the follow-on blogs in this series and discover the different ways that Dell Technologies is working hard to protect your business.
Author: Craig Phelps