“Digital Transformation has raised the stakes, with 69% of senior executives telling Forbes that this is forcing fundamental changes to security strategies. If you’re going to open your organization up to new customers, new markets, and anytime, anywhere access, you need to do it securely.”

– Ann Johnson, Corporate Vice President, Cybersecurity solutions, Microsoft

The Digital Climate

How can we protect ourselves in this new digital era? It’s a question that many businesses and governments are asking worldwide. In the digital world we live in today, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity. When we think about the advancements of cloud, and the ability of employees to access applications and data from almost anywhere, the face of employee mobility and teamwork has significantly changed, but that also raises concerns with regards to security. In fact, the estimated cost due to cybercrime is expected to reach $3 trillion by 2020.

In order to build resilience in the security space, we need to understand the challenges that are out there and how to combat them.

Today’s key challenges and how to securely prepare for the Cloud

As excitement builds among organizations to move to the Cloud and leverage its benefits and advantages, it is crucial to adopt a measured and proactive approach. Only in this way can organizations prepare their Cloud environments to provide optimal impact and evolve in a manner that does not expose their data or assets to unnecessary or unreasonable risk.

The challenges organizations face in this period of transformation are straightforward but often require a change in thinking:

1) It starts with Identity Management

Identity attacks are up 300% this year alone. Identity is becoming the essential control plane for security; attackers understand this and are heavily targeting this gateway to your organization.

Traditional security boundaries are blurred and are no longer the primary defense point. Identities are the key avenues to accessing any organization’s resources and data, no matter where they are. Identity-based protection is a critical starting point for a strong defense against today’s attacks, especially for profiles with privileged access.

2) Adapting to the Cloud models

The Cloud cannot be secured like a mere extension of the traditional on premises environment. This is a new environment that requires new thinking, such as accepting the notion of shared responsibility between the enterprise and the Cloud provider in order to stay future-proof.

3) Focus on the data

The data must be secured above all else. The only assets the organization will truly own in the Cloud is its data. Security strategies must be adapted to this fact and work to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the data at all times.

4) Evolve all aspects of the security strategy, at speed

Do not focus solely on areas such as Protection and Detection. Ensure the security strategy for the new Cloud era also includes areas such as Prevention, Identity Management, Incident Response, Business Continuity and Recovery. And do it at speed.

Attacks are spreading incredibly fast, making it highly difficult for humans to keep up. 96% of the malware we detect is automated polymorphic malware that changes its look and shape every time it infects a new system.

As attackers adopt automation, you need to also have automation in your corner. The best protections can be beaten, and so you must be agile to quickly detect attacks and have automatic responses prepared to react.

Remaining Agile to Build Resistance

In order to build a digital resilience, you must understand the risk of cyber-attacks and understand the strategic areas to focus on in order to successfully combat them. In order to help customers stay informed, Microsoft publishes an update every 6 months called the Security Intelligence Report on the global security landscape. It’s a great resource to ensure you are maintaining a state of digital resilience.

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Built to Detect, Protect and Respond

We’ve invested over $1,000,000,000 in our people, technology, facilities and research to make sure we, as well as our customers, stay secure. This investment has also allowed us to work in concert with law enforcement agencies globally in combatting the most pernicious forms of cybercrime, including botnets.

Attaining a mature cybersecurity posture and maintaining its capabilities at the leading edge is an expensive proposition for any organization.  It entails both operational and capital costs which, though potentially expensive , are vital to long-term survival.  Organizations want to secure their assets in an effective and cost efficient manner.

Protect Your Assets by Partnering

Microsoft is dedicated to maintaining itself at the forefront of cybersecurity. Partner with us to secure your information resources and reduce risk to your most valuable assets.

Microsoft can help in several ways:

• Azure and Office 365 infrastructures provide a highly secure environment for IT assets and systems, assuring you never worry about secure facilities or perimeter systems
• Azure’s Security Center provides customers with built-in and cost effective ability to protect their own assets within their Azure environment as well as to detect and respond to threats
• Microsoft’s best-of-breed cybersecurity expertise and people help customers expand and evolve their own IT security capabilities

An Agile Platform to Protect You

Microsoft builds security into its products and services from the start. We deliver a comprehensive, agile platform to better protect your endpoints and move faster to detect threats. Our depth of experience, expertise and resources position us to be the premier security partner for organizations looking to leverage their existing on-premises investments, for those looking to securely move to the cloud or for those trying to do both.

Learn more about how Microsoft’s platform and unique intelligence can help your business.

Listen Now to the Accelerate PodCast – special Security episodes on  “Compliance and Risk” and “Security and Culture”.

Read more in this e-book “7 Ways to Improve your Security Posture”

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