[Exclusive] In Conversation with CiOL: Surendra Singh, Senior Director and Country Manager, Forcepoint

Traditional cybersecurity solutions for the problems faced by organizations are inherently reactive. Whenever a new problem is discovered which cannot be solved effectively by existing products, organizations deploy new products to address it. This affects operational efficiency, increases labour costs and a greater need for training and support. Research says organizations that use more than 50 tools to manage their security environment and respond to incidents rank 8% lower in their ability to detect an attack. And each additional tool increases complexity in a way that adversely affects the security team’s capacity to detect, prevent, contain, and respond to incidents.

Given the above scenario, Surendra Singh, Senior Director & Country Manager, discusses the changing security landscape and how a collection of products from cybersecurity point-of-view will not work in a world of shrinking budgets and ever-increasing operational complexity.

The increasing cyberattacks are a testament to any corporation's resilience. How do they manage among the n-number of products available and get the right cloud security solution for their organization?

The pressure is on for businesses to achieve digital transformation while remaining agile and lean. This need has resulted in a burst of available cloud-based applications and services that are designed to reduce overhead spending, streamline processes and capitalise on innovative, more relevant technologies. For many companies, the adoption of cloud-based infrastructure is the next logical step in their evolution.

However, for those in IT teams, the transition from primarily on-premises systems to hybrid or public cloud solutions is not a simple one to make. The move to the cloud can raise many unanswered questions for IT leaders, and it’s a tough decision to make with the potential for devastating data breaches or compromised critical systems should the wrong choice be made.

Yet, mastering policy setting and control within the cloud is not an impossible task, especially when deploying the right tools and cloud security architecture. There are ultimate challenges organisations face when protecting data in the cloud as well as benefits associated with cloud security automation. We’ve created a list to help IT leaders identify what they need to consider for their cloud security solutions.

Regardless of what stage an organisation is in, its cloud adoption strategy, and maintaining strict data compliance, must be a crucial factor in each stage throughout the digital transformation. With the help of cloud security automation tools and solutions, companies will be able to effectively maintain visibility and control of their data, no matter where it is stored and how it is accessed.

We are moving to more cloud-oriented operations. Is there a way to be proactive rather than reactive?

When COVID quickly forced a considerable portion of the workforce to work from home, many companies saw a surge in productivity and the wide-spread adoption of the cloud. Even after the threat of the pandemic has passed, remote working will likely remain. Many organisations are embracing new, flexible technologies that offer the ability to work from anywhere, on any device, at any time – across applications that can exist anywhere. Entire organisations are no longer bound to the workplace. And applications and data are no longer bound to the corporate network.

But, with this unbound enterprise existence comes the need for businesses to ensure robust cloud security is in place. Security threats are evolving constantly and becoming more sophisticated. Cloud computing is no less at risk than an on-premise environment and, for this reason, it is essential to work with a cloud provider that offers best-in-class security that has been customised to each organisation’s infrastructure.

Not only does this mean tailored operations that enable proactive management of an organisation’s security, but cloud security also offers numerous additional benefits. From reliability and reduced administration to centralised security where cloud-based business networks – which consist of many endpoints and devices that can be hard to manage – can be managed centrally to enhance traffic analysis and web filtering.

Another benefit that enables IT Teams to be proactive is that cloud storage and security eliminates the need to invest in dedicated hardware. Not only does this reduce cost, but it also reduces administrative overheads. Where IT teams were previously firefighting security issues reactively, cloud security enables proactive security features that offer protection around the clock with little or no human intervention.

What role do Point Products play to curb the ever-increasing number of attacks? Isn't one size fits all approach better than having to spend on various point products?

For problems faced by organisations, traditional cybersecurity solutions are inherently reactive. Whenever a new problem is discovered that cannot be solved effectively by existing products, a new product is deployed to address it. This results in increased costs and a greater need for training and support, with operational efficiency and effectiveness suffering.

Even when point products can interoperate, they often do not enable implementing security policies consistently across the myriad of products a customer has. Instead, security teams must manually process information from multiple tools to respond to security events. Organisations using more than 50 tools to manage their security environment and respond to incidents ranked 8% lower in their ability to detect an attack. Each additional tool then also increases complexity in a way that adversely affects the security team’s capacity to detect, prevent, contain, and respond to incidents.

In today’s current climate of shrinking budgets and ever-increasing operational complexity, what’s crucial is solutions that make life simpler and easier. A collection of products does not have this effect. At Forcepoint, we’ve introduced Cloud Security Gateway (CSG), a new converged cloud security service. This provides control, visibility and threat protection for users and data – no matter where they are. It combines the capabilities previously found in Forcepoint Data Loss, Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Prevention (DLP) and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) into a single product that allows for easy adoption. We have also integrated our flagship behaviour-based technology that understands people’s actions, to stop the bad and free the good.

With WFH policies likely to continue for many organizations, the remote workforces need secure access to applications. What products would help them, or how do they manage their cybersecurity portfolio?

With working from home here to stay, organisations need market-leading solutions that have been built to protect the modern enterprise. From cloud platform solutions that support businesses and their employees to work from anywhere – such as dynamic data protection and dynamic user protection – to hybrid products.

Organisations need to rapidly identify and mitigate security risks, around the clock. Automation plays a large part in enabling organisations to mitigate risks no matter the hour. Through Next Generation firewall to Data Loss Prevention, Secure Web Gateway and Behavioral Analytics – there are solutions within reach that can help organisations manage their cybersecurity portfolio.

Can you elaborate more on Forcepoint’s data-centric approach to SASE (Secure Access Service Edge)?

People are the new perimeter of the enterprise, with applications and data more often used outside of the boundaries of the traditional enterprise than inside. And with this, as many organisations are coming to understand, means that the old infrastructure-centric approach to protecting and delivering information cannot keep up.

Just as siloed security “stacks” gave way in the 2010s to integrated products, we’re now seeing the capabilities provided by those products come together as unified security services in the cloud. Known as SASE, this purpose-built approach to cloud-based security has rapidly caught the attention of IT leaders around the world.

At Forcepoint, we have developed a new, cloud-native security platform to power a range of new security solutions – the first of which is Dynamic Edge Protection (DEP).

DEP provides an all-in-one way for organisations to deliver from the cloud, advanced web, network, and application access security as a service. It implements the SASE model, incorporating together advanced capabilities such as firewalling, intrusion prevention, malware scanning, URL filtering, web content inspection, application access, and more. No matter where employees are working, this converged approach eliminates gaps and redundancies to consistently stop attackers.

What does Francisco Partners' acquisition bring to the Forcepoint portfolio? Does it change the security-centric approach to expansion-approach?

Cybersecurity has never been more crucial for businesses and governments across the globe. As we continue to see broad-scale global attacks, the cybersecurity industry needs to evolve to deliver security capabilities to match those of today’s sophisticated threat actors. Similarly, every organisation today must evolve its security posture to holistically integrate cybersecurity across the entirety of its business operations and culture. It can no longer be viewed as ‘just an IT issue’. At Forcepoint, we’ve built an industry-leading portfolio of security products that protect our customers’ infrastructure, people, and data.

This transaction represents an exciting opportunity for Forcepoint to continue to innovate and drive growth with Francisco Partners. We believe that this partnership will help us to continue to invest in our products and organization while delivering increased value to our customers.

Delivering Zero Trust Security will demand a platform approach rather than a portfolio mix approach. How do Forcepoint ZTx (Zero Trust Extended) roadmap and differentiation excel compare to its competition?

The philosophy behind Zero Trust it is often boiled down to, "never trust, always verify", whereas most traditional models can be described as "trust but verify”. In today’s remote working world, Zero Trust is the ‘how’ to the ‘what’ of SASE. Request permission every time, continually validate and grant the least privilege possible until users can authenticate further. SASE is an effective means to deliver a zero-trust approach across enterprise networks.

But delivering ‘Zero Trust’ across a corporate network requires a broader approach than siloed point products. SASE incorporates security tools into a converged, cloud-delivered platform, which is agnostic to the specific tools or locations in which users might be working.

Everyone’s digital transformation roadmap is different, but there are several considerations organisations need to include to implement an efficient Zero Trust architecture – from considering the technologies needed to add to any current stack, through to understanding access needs and an organisation’s internal culture.