Cybersecurity continues to inspire both concern and frustration across industries—and for good reason. Despite our best efforts and the introduction of countless security tools, cyberattackers maintain the upper hand. In fact, a recent report from Accenture estimates that over the next five years, companies globally may incur $5.2 trillion in additional costs and lost revenue from cyberattacks. At the same time, global spending on cybersecurity products and services is likely to exceed $1 trillion globally between 2017 and 2021.
Clearly, investment in cybersecurity solutions is not the issue. But if a lack of resources isn’t the problem, what is? At VMware, this central paradox informed our approach to cybersecurity. We realized that the huge investments organizations make in their cybersecurity tools and their traditional approaches to security are actually negatively impacting the overall effectiveness of their security posture.
To be clear, that does not mean that organizations should reduce their investment in cybersecurity solutions. Rather, it means that money thrown at a problem in an ad hoc and non-strategic manner only increases complexity and thus risk. According to IBM, the average cybersecurity team uses 80 different security products from 40 different vendors, many of which are poorly integrated with one another. This leads to complexities as each product must be individually managed and alerts from these tools have to be responded to separately. This creates “alert fatigue” when cybersecurity operations centers are simultaneously bursting with security alerts. That makes catching real breaches extremely difficult.
Instead, companies and IT departments require a comprehensive cybersecurity solution that decreases complexity and is built for the perimeter-less network environment in which we currently exist. By adopting a Zero Trust security framework, Workspace ONE solves complexity by offering intrinsic—rather than bolted on—security. That means security is ubiquitous throughout the data access path and in a way that is simple and easy to use.
Workspace One supports Zero Trust security and gives individuals least privilege access to applications, meaning it only gives the required amount of access to get their job done and nothing more. And because the platform employs continuous verification of trust across both user and device, users can be locked out from the network when suspicious activity is detected. Together, these capabilities ensure a cybersecurity breach remains an isolated incident—quarantined to a small part of the network—and not a systemwide meltdown. If you’re interested in learning more about a Zero Trust architecture, visit “Master Zero Trust” in the VMware Digital Workspace Tech Zone.
Although real world application of the Zero Trust security framework is still maturing, VMware’s Workspace ONE offering is the most comprehensive available today. Below are three of the most important cybersecurity challenges Workspace ONE solves and which we believe contribute immensely to our current cybersecurity paradox.
Complexity
The lack of a single integrated solution increases complexity and threat response time. Additionally, it creates an inconsistent employee experience that results in more help desk tickets and an even higher burden on already stretched IT professionals. In contrast, Workspace ONE simplifies Zero Trust with conditional access controls built into an end-to-end digital workspace platform. It’s a platform that provides:
• Device trust and state assurance for endpoints.
• Identity-based access control, multi-factor authentication, and user behavioral analytics.
• Micro-segmentation with App-tunneling and encryption in motion.
• Data loss prevention, containerization, and remoting for apps.
• Encryption and network virtualization.
Reactive Cybersecurity Responses
Zero Trust security with Workspace ONE enables IT to move from a reactive to proactive security posture by establishing trust across the entire Digital Workspace. With traditional security solutions, IT is often overwhelmed by information and susceptible to breaches as a result. Workspace ONE provides unparalleled visibility by using machine learning-driven analytics to verify context and calculate easy-to-understand risk scores. Risk analytics enable:
• Real-time and continuous monitoring for visibility into the entire digital workspace, helping secure company applications, data, and infrastructure.
• Automated remediation that effortlessly restores compliance.
• Improved user experience as policies adapt to reduce friction in network access requests.
Silos of Security and Management Tools
Quick-fix, bolt-on security approaches create silos of tools that don’t talk to each other or effectively work together. That makes it incredibly difficult to scale or update security tools as needed. via the Workspcae ONE Trust Network lets you easily integrate best-of-breed solutions to avoid being locked-in with a vendor who is simply “good enough.” Ultimately, you receive the flexibility to integrate the tools you need with the simplicity engineered natively into the VMware Digital Workspace. This integrated ecosystem helps you bridge security solution silos across all digital workspace attack vectors.
Workspace ONE simplifies the path to Zero Trust by providing a holistic, platform-based approach to cybersecurity. But it’s important to remember that reaching Zero Trust is not always a linear path—nor does it have to be. Each step—from the introduction of multi-factor authentication to setting policy configurations—is by itself useful and effective. The path to Zero Trust is a multi-step process that is highly attainable and can serve to comprehensively upgrade the organization’s security posture.
