Bryant Brewster

October 23, 2019

It’s no secret that to achieve their goals of increased efficiency, scalability, and data-driven decision making, organizations have been turning to a digital transformation of their business processes. That is, using technology to change how their value proposition, processes and go to market strategies. IDC forecasts that global digital transformation spending will reach $1.18 trillion in 2019, an increase of nearly 18% over 2018.  But in a time where digital transformation is so prevalent, security isn’t always considered as thoroughly as the revolution of business processes.  As organizations rapidly adopt new technologies, they must account for the dramatic changes this will have on their threat landscape.

Know Your Customer’s Environment

Often, strategic digital transformation projects can be put into motion much faster than the security implications can be evaluated and act upon.  This can lead to a security architecture that is highly complex and hard to unify.  When dealing with a siloed, non-integrated environment that’s comprised of numerous multi-vendor solutions it becomes tough to reconcile data in a purposeful way.

When working with a customer, it is crucial to know what type of environment they are operating in.  Understand how many different partner products are in play and how these products interact.  Once this is understood, you can more effectively cater to their needs.  Whether the customer operates in hybrid or multi-cloud, has an edge IT strategy or you want to be able to offer security tools that can support whatever environment is necessary. 

Making Data Security a Priority

Digital transformation for your customer will inevitably lead to greater reliance on the data it generates and what it does with the information. Data is one of the most valuable assets a company possesses, but it is not always secured as if it were.  A recent survey from IDC reveals that the spending for data security is as low as six percent of the total security budget.  In addition, 97 percent of respondents indicated that sensitive data was being used on new digital transformation projects but less than 30 percent were using tools to keep that data secure within the environment.  The rise of compliance requirements, such as GDPR and HIPAA, have helped to spur an increase in data security spending but there is still work to do.   

Exposing sensitive data, for even a short time, can prove to be very costly.  To best ensure the safety of an organization’s sensitive data, a security-minded approach should be implemented from the start of the digital transformation process, not after.  Security vendors should aim to get involved as early as possible to make sure that data isn’t exposed through a lack of firewalls, encryption, tracking, etc.

Implementing Automation

The advent of IoT, mobile apps and many more has increased the need for security that can handle the perpetually growing number of endpoints in an organization.  Eventually, an organization’s threat landscape becomes too much to handle through manual analysis and response alone.  Automating certain security practices will help security teams keep up with the growing number of threats and vulnerabilities. The need for automation is reflected throughout the industry as a recent survey, conducted by Fidelis Cybersecurity, found that 57% of security professionals considered a lack of security automation as their top concern. 

An automated response system that can work in conjunction with an organization’s security team to reduce the time-consuming manual analysis and human error, streamline alert responses, help stay compliant, and improve reporting measures has proven to be extremely valuable. Organizations will be receptive to automated security solutions that allow their customer’s security professionals to devote more time on higher level and business critical tasks.  

Digital transformation will continue to drive the modern economy, with IDC forecasting $6 trillion spent globally over the next four years, but it cannot come at the cost of security. Whether a customer is just beginning their digital transformation process, or it’s been underway for years, they will need scalable security solutions. Vendors need to understand where their customer is in their digital transformation journey and make sure the tools and solutions they have in place are in lockstep with that organization’s evolving attack surface. Only by baking security into modernization plans from the start will organizations reap the benefits that come with digital transformation.