Three months into 2022 and it is clear that the intensification of the cyber attacks brought on by the pandemic has only continued.
Many people are still working remotely, stretching companies’ networks and security perimeters and challenging traditional approaches to security.
So says Hila Meller, BT’s security VP for the Americas, EMEA and APAC. “The massive growth of security threats, from e-mail scams, ransomware and malicious botnets to brute force attacks, continues to haunt telcos, systems integrators and organisations.”
She says telcos and systems integrators are under pressure from security threats, and at the same time, their customers depend on them to provide cyber security measures to enable them to protect their digital infrastructure.
In addition, the lack of cyber security skills, widened attack surface, and increasingly stringent regulatory environment, have made it clear that in-house expertise is being stretched beyond its limits.
In response to these daunting demands, Meller says many telecom resellers and systems integrators are turning to a collaborative cyber security services model. This model includes considering current investments, the need for flexibility, trust, and risk management.
“However, they should consider outsourcing volume activities which don’t need insight to reduce the load on their analysts. Similarly, companies which have invested in firewall management may want to outsource advanced threat detection to get up to speed more quickly in areas such as threat hunting.”
According to her, organisations and their partners need to be more proactive, particularly when dealing with the fallout from major supply chain attacks, such as SolarWinds. They should have a clear agreements in place detailing who is responsible for what during calm times, and when crises invariably happen.
“Some of the strategic technology decisions made during the pandemic, such as engaging new vendors to address a particular need, led to an increase in risk that security teams must now contend with,” says Meller. “The more vendors that are introduced into a service model, the more complex it becomes to consistently apply policies.”
When it comes to managing risk, the organisation needs to regain or maintain a high degree of control and ownership, and be able to identify, and get the benefit of, outside expertise.
The bottom line is that very organisation, including telecom resellers and systems integrators, needs to invest in either in-house security teams, partnerships with managed cybersecurity providers or a combination of both in order to lower their risk in 2022, Meller says.
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