For too long, enterprises have taken a castle-like defensive approach to cybersecurity, heavily fortifying the walls and gates around their networks and endpoints with the ultimate goal of protecting their most treasured possessions - their sensitive data. However, in today's world of widespread data sharing and collaboration, enterprises must think beyond the castle walls to protect their sensitive data as it moves outside the fortified perimeter to get business done.
Imagine a medieval kingdom. The castle is built with thick stone walls, deep moats, and heavily guarded gates and corridors to protect the crown jewels locked within the inner vault. But at some point, the crown jewels (sensitive data) must be transported outside the castle walls to conduct affairs of state - purchasing provisions, trading with other lands, and expanding the kingdom's holdings.
When the crown jewels must venture outside the castle confines, no king would be willing to risk their safety without a security detail traveling alongside. That’s why, whenever crown jewels leave the castle, they are escorted by an armed troop of the kingdom's most elite knights to defend against bandits and thieves. The knights form an offensive protection force, ensuring the treasures make it safely to their destination while having full visibility and control of its whereabouts.
In the enterprise today, the crown jewels are the most sensitive documents, data, source code, and other intellectual property. To protect this information and prevent theft, an enterprise forms a robust perimeter (castle walls) through firewalls, endpoint protection, and identity management. However, in order to conduct business effectively, the data must perpetually move outside of the perimeter through common workflows like email, file sharing solutions, SaaS, mobile devices, etc. And as such, enterprises must ensure safe delivery of the data through end-to-end data encryption, granular access controls, and auditing.
A robust data-centric security posture includes not only data at rest but also data in motion. Just as the kingdom's knights defend the crown jewels en route, end-to-end encryption via email and file sharing solutions provide an armed escort for data's perilous journey across the wide area network.
Enterprise cybersecurity strategies must balance defensive investments, locking down the castle walls, with robust offensive measures to protect data doing the kingdom's business outside the gate. End-to-end data encryption, granular access controls, and auditing are the knights safeguarding the kingdom's most valuable crown jewels.
No matter how impenetrable and complex the walls, failure to defend the crown jewels once they've ventured outside leads to the looting of the entire kingdom. Adopting a forward-thinking data-centric security posture to escort your data assets safely to their destination is the reflection of a great enterprise kingdom.