Integrated Adaptive Cyber Défense (IACD) or Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem (ACE) is a comprehensive system built to optimize prevention, detection, and response. It protects the new reality of interconnected business systems and defends against the shifting cyberattack landscape that combines automation with hacking. Ideally, ACE leverages AI and ML-based automation and analysts.
IACD defines a strategy and framework to adopt an extensible, adaptive, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-based approach. The goal is to dramatically change the timeline and effectiveness of cyber defence via integration, automation, orchestration and sharing of machine-readable cyber threat information.
Why this is relevant now:
The threat landscape in which our cybersecurity operates is constantly evolving, and there have been significant shifts in both business environments and the nature of attacks in recent years.
- Shifts in business models and interconnectivity
In the constant search for ways to improve productivity and efficiency, enterprises are moving from On Premise to Cloud, along with the infrastructure and technology to support it.
- Impact of pandemic
COVID-19 accelerated the shift to home/remote working, and in doing so shattered any remaining myth of an organizational perimeter. It should be assumed that people, applications, devices, and data can be found anywhere.
- Shifts in cyber-attack patterns
Not only has cybersecurity effectiveness significantly improved, but the latest tools and managed security services are more accessible and cost-effective than ever before. Technologies like anti-ransomware, exploit prevention, behavioural detection, and anti-phishing are available to all and mostly free.
- Shifts in enterprise IT security management to security operation
The above business and attack shifts necessitate a change in IT security. Organizations face an intelligent adversary that continually moves the objective as they progress toward it, requiring IT security teams to develop countermeasures to improve their chances of winning. It requires a step-change shift from security management to security operations.
With businesses now so interconnected, security needs must follow suit. IT security teams need to move from unintegrated security point products to an adaptive security system that automatically prevents as much as possible while enabling operators to search and detect weaker signals – such as suspicious behaviours and events – and prevent them from becoming breaches.
The top three important strategies that CISOs need to adopt to keep up with an evolving security landscape and a high prevalence of threats to data security include:
- Increased monitoring of Application Security layer
CISOs must use a unified platform to secure custom code, open-source libraries SDKs (software development kits), and APIs (application programming interfaces) to catch security bugs early and often before they impact users or systems. Platforms such as these make it easy to enforce security policies, secure custom code and open-source libraries, ultimately achieving preventative security to catch bugs early and often.
The future of mitigating threats at the application layer requires tools and approaches that ensure the layer’s security requires careful control of user input. Executives can direct their IT departments to lock down session security and user access and harden apps against OWASP top 10 threats, including SQL injections. Ultimately, the future of application-layer security requires that business executives lean on an adage of the past: never fully trust the user.
- Blending AI and cybersecurity
AI and ML can make adaptive security possible in such a way that a business’s security architecture can work on every level to respond to external and internal threats, all in real-time. AI can help automatically scale these security solutions based on the individual needs of a company. It represents a scalable solution in response to cyber threats that are constantly evolving and need to be tracked 24/7.
- Increased Data Security
Adaptive cybersecurity strategies deserve tools to transmit data in a private and reliable manner securely. No matter how small or innocuous you feel your data is, any information you transfer between your devices must be encrypted.
Any of your data assets that fall into the hands of cybercriminals can wind up permanently affecting your reputation and negatively impacting your business financially. Make sure to protect your business with VPN encryption to keep your data safe at all times as you continue to work remotely.
Summary:
The modern cybersecurity threat landscape needs businesses to continue adapting and growing to remain secure and competitive. They must train their security teams and equip them with the latest updated security tools to detect breaches and stop them right there. They must keep innovating their existing cybersecurity infrastructure, involving key security elements like application security layer, Endpoint security, Zero Trust Architecture, etc., in sync with the evolving threat scenario. With these security measures in place, businesses can ensure utmost safety and security to customers while establishing a robust digital presence.