Platform Play: What it is and How it Can Help you Stay Ahead of Security Threats

SoftwareONE’s security practice lead I’ve coined the term Platform Play – a concept which from my many years in Cyber-Security will reframe the way your organization stays several steps ahead of security threats.

The traditional ways in which you secured your business’s IT assets no longer apply. With the rise of the cloud IT teams now move and protect our data through old walls and boundaries that no longer exist.

Security teams, for example, typically need to manage upwards of 16 different point security vendors in order to keep an organization compliant and protected. Couple this with the fact that security threats are becoming more pervasive and not less so and you have a more complicated situation.

To help mitigate the risks of trying to do it all yourself or implementing various security point solutions, implementing a platform security solution that plays well together is a viable option for 3 reasons.

• Moving to a platform-based security solution takes the burden off of the organization by having a single solution to address multiple aspects of your security requirements
• A platform solution is typically managed by a managed security service provider further eliminating the need for additional security hires – addressing the security skills gaps in your organization
• You can consolidate various point security solutions by moving to a single integrated platform

Data is your most important asset

It’s important to realize that one of your more important assets is your data. Putting a synchronized one-point security plan in place to protect your data will protect your company in the long run, particularly as the Cyber-Crime Supply Chain continues to expand.

Our recent blog showed that the average costs of a data breach is approximately $3.86 million with more than 360,000 new malware samples created and distributed every day.

With the increased demand for a comprehensive solution giving you the protection you need, many organizations are looking at embedded cloud solutions with integrated security. Most decision makers have now rationalized that having 80% of the capability in a platform based solution is becoming reality.

This could alleviate the security team’s burden of managing multiple point solutions. From my personal conversations with many security executives and consultation with clients, what I’ve gleaned is that the time spent evaluating the capabilities of multiple point solutions is all consuming – and it doesn’t need to be.

Key business outcomes

A platform based approach solves multiple weak points of your Cyber-Security strategy. The business outcome of implementing platform play are:

• Less training to ramp up and reduced effort in managing and maintaining the solution as opposed to learning about and maintaining multiple point solutions.
• A platform-based approach that is managed in the cloud means that your environment is continuously updated against the latest threats and eliminates the need for security personnel to constantly monitor alerts and incidents.
  

It’s about ramping up, managing multiple point solutions and diverse security training needs. At the end of the day, a good security solution isn’t about saving money but rather about how effectively it protects and detects.

A platform based solution in the security realm is Nirvana, in other words, an ideal, because it lets the organization actually focus on the business threats. Additionally, once the threats are detected, how effective it is for incident response (forensic analysis).

In part one of our blog series, “Taking a Closer Look at the Shared Security Responsibility Model”, we delved into how multi-cloud and hybrid environments are changing the traditional security perimeter and what this means for your long-term cloud security strategy.

Part two, “Combatting the Cyber-Security Skills Gap with Managed Security Services”, continued the discussion in regards to how to best manage the security needs of an organization when it doesn’t necessarily have the resources in house.

Part three, “Platform Play: What it Is and How it Can help You Stay Ahead of Security Threats” discusses how adoption of “cloud-first” – and what is evolving into a “cloud-only” IT strategy – has consistently proven benefits of cost reduction, business productivity, collaboration, and operational effectiveness.

However the benefits of “cloud-first” comes at a risk, a risk which introducing platform play can manage. The touted benefits of cloud adoption are typically around one’s Return on Investment (ROI), but this comes with a higher level of Cyber-Risk. Here at SoftwareONE we believe platform play helps manage that risk.

With National Cyber-Security Awareness Month not far behind us, organizations will need enhanced Cyber-Risk strategies and plans that align to “cloud-first” and “cloud-only” initiatives.

Under the increased pressure on investing intelligently (while maintaining an acceptable level of risk), most Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are now looking at strategies where multiple aspects of security can be addressed with one offering. This is the new world of platform play.

For more information on platform play, be sure to learn more about our managed security services – including both Security for Azure and Security for Microsoft 365.