Connectivity is one of the defining characteristics of the 21st century, permeating every aspect of our lives. Connectivity is also fundamental to our IT infrastructure. We build our networks to enable all the different elements of our organization to link up, to be part of a system rather than work in isolation.

As technology continues to advance, so too does our dependence and use of connectivity. This is especially true as we embrace working from home solutions to the Covid pandemic. Unsurprisingly, today’s enterprising cybercriminals have enthusiastically embraced connectivity. They use a range of connected techniques in their malware attacks: a phishing email leads to an initial foot in the door, followed by a malware infection through the exploitation of a known or unknown defect, then an escalation of privileges or a lateral movement across the network to spread the infection across different devices. 

Unfortunately, cybersecurity has struggled to see the wood from the trees when it comes to connectivity. Technology companies have focused on creating products that focus on one specific part of the problem, yet don’t connect with each other. For example, endpoint protection products connect a range of data points to identify if a file is malicious or benign. Firewalls connect multiple technologies – deep learning, IPS, sandboxing, etc. – to stop malicious traffic. Yet these two pillars of our cybersecurity defenses work in isolation, unconnected from each other.
While this approach has resulted in strong individual solutions, it misses the bigger picture: as both technology and cyberthreats become ever more connected, point security products, no matter how good they are, can only ever have limited impact. The result of our current, unconnected approach is that despite significant financial investment in security solutions, cybersecurity is not getting any easier – we continue to face the same core challenges we did 10 or even 20 years ago. Indeed, rather than making progress in the fight against cyberattacks, 83% of IT managers agree that threats have actually got harder to stop over the last year. 

In addition to exacerbating security risks, our disconnected approach to cybersecurity also puts a heavy burden on IT teams. Manually correlating data between systems and identifying appropriate actions burns valuable hours.

That is why at RKL we choose Synchronized Security from Sophus to address these issues.