Integrated cloud-native security platforms can overcome limitations of traditional security products

To close security gaps caused by rapidly changing digital ecosystems, organizations must adopt an integrated cloud-native security platform that incorporates artificial intelligence, automation, intelligence, threat detection and data analytics capabilities, according to 451 Research.

Cloud-native security platforms are essential

The report clearly defines how to create a scalable, adaptable, and agile security posture built for today’s diverse and disparate IT ecosystems. And it warns that legacy approaches and MSSPs cannot keep up with the speed of digital transformation.

• Massive change is occurring. Over 97 percent of organizations reported they are underway with, or expecting, digital transformation progress in the next 24 months, and over 41 percent are allocating more than 50 percent of their IT budgets to projects that grow and transform the business.
• Security platforms enable automation and orchestration capabilities across the entire IT stack, streamlining and optimizing security operations, improving productivity, enabling higher utilization of assets, increasing the ROI of security investments and helping address interoperability challenges created by isolated, multi-vendor point products.
• Threat-driven and outcome-based security platforms address the full attack continuum, compared with legacy approaches that generally focus on defensive blocking of a single vector.
• Modern security platforms leverage AI and ML to solve some of the most prevalent challenges for security teams, including expertise shortages, alert fatigue, fraud detection, behavioral analysis, risk scoring, correlating threat intelligence, detecting advanced persistent threats, and finding patterns in increasing volumes of data.
• Modern security platforms are positioned to deliver real-time, high-definition visibility with an unobstructed view of the entire IT ecosystem, providing insights into the company’s assets, attack surface, risks and potential threats and enabling rapid response and threat containment.

451 Senior Analyst Aaron Sherrill noted, “The impact of an ever-evolving IT ecosystem combined with an ever-evolving threat landscape can be overwhelming to even the largest, most well-funded security teams, including those at traditional MSSPs.

“Unfortunately, a web of disparate and siloed security tools, a growing expertise gap and an overwhelming volume of security events and alerts continue to plague internal and service provider security teams of every size.

“The consequences of these challenges are vast, preventing security teams from gaining visibility, scaling effectively, responding rapidly and adapting quickly. Today’s threat and business landscape demands new approaches and new technologies.”

How to deliver effective cybersecurity today

“Delivering effective cybersecurity today requires being able to consume a growing stream of telemetry and events from a wide range of signal sources,” said Dustin Hillard, CTO, eSentire.

“It requires being able to process that data to identify attacks while avoiding false positives and negatives. It requires equipping a team of expert analysts and threat hunters with the tools they need to investigate incidents and research advanced, evasive attacks.

“Most importantly, it requires the ability to continuously upgrade detection and defenses. These requirements demand changing the technology foundations upon which cybersecurity solutions are built—moving from traditional security products and legacy MSSP services to modern cloud-native platforms.”

Sherrill further noted, “Cloud-native security platforms optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of security operations by hiding complexity and bringing together disparate data, tools, processes, workflows and policies into a unified experience.

“Infused with automation and orchestration, artificial intelligence and machine learning, big data analytics, multi-vector threat detection, threat intelligence, and machine and human collaboration, cloud-native security platforms can provide the vehicle for scalable, adaptable and agile threat detection, hunting, and response. And when combined with managed detection and response services, organizations are able to quickly bridge expertise and resource gaps and attain a more comprehensive and impactful approach to cybersecurity.”