A surprising thing happened when organizations around the world got serious about protecting themselves, their data and their customers from sophisticated cyberthreats: They developed new, dynamic approaches to cybersecurity that fueled IT innovation and extended beyond the security realm to make enterprises more effective and competitive.
On second thought, perhaps this outcome is not so surprising. The demands of security are driving IT innovation and forcing analysts to get creative. And when you let creativity loose, it rarely confines itself to only one field.
Collaboration and Trust Promote IT Innovation
According to CIO Insight, cybersecurity threats have encouraged organizations to fight back with a variety of strategies and tactics. PwC further examined some of these methods in its report, “The Global State of Information Security Survey 2017.” Some approaches that drew widespread support include running IT functions in the cloud, calling on managed security services (MSS), biometric authentication, wider use of open source software, big data analytics for security and investing in security for the Internet of Things (IoT), the report showed.
The migration of IT functions to MSS and cloud reflect broader trends in industry. In the most immediate sense, enterprises turn to managed security services because trained specialists are in short supply. This is also a driver for cloud-based IT.
But the cloud and managed services options rely fundamentally on trust and collaboration between vendors and customers. The fact that these relationships are now reliable, even in a domain as sensitive as cybersecurity, testifies to a growing web of trust and confidence upon which all organizations can draw.
Security Leads the Way Into a Dynamic Future
The rate of cloud adoption varies by business unit. A broad 63 percent of survey respondents reported running IT functions in the cloud. In contrast, cloud adoption for operations, customer service, marketing and finance departments all ranged between 36 and 32 percent. In short, the IT community is leading the way to the cloud.
Meanwhile, 62 percent of respondents reporting using MSS for cybersecurity and privacy, nearly identical to the rate of cloud use. Since the security and IT communities are closely linked, it’s no wonder parties within the two industries are eager to form partnerships.
Authentication is the one most widely used managed security services, the study revealed, with 64 percent adoption. Data loss prevention, identity and access management (IAM), and real-time monitoring and analytics follow fairly closely behind at rates between 55 and 61 percent. Threat intelligence lags somewhat behind at 48 percent, likely due to the very high level of sophistication and collaboration it requires. This represents the cutting edge of security,.
In short, organizations can address challenges and opportunities extending far beyond cybersecurity itself by pursuing innovative approaches to security.