Four security challenges businesses face in 2023

The challenges that IT and security teams face are constantly changing. As a result of these changes, the mission for those teams is changing as well. 

Some threats, like ransomware and phishing attacks, have been around for years and aren’t going away any time soon. Others are newer or are just being discovered such as supply chain attacks. To further complicate matters,  CISOs are now  grappling with security skill shortages in the market, which are resulting in business disruptions, lost productivity,  and financial losses.

One of the biggest challenges organizations face is finding the root cause of an incident across silos of teams that don’t properly communicate. As an example, the security team might not have any idea what’s happening on the network performance side, nor does the performance side have any idea that a security breach is occurring that could be causing network degradation. It’s very common in most organizations that the tools each department uses, or the departments themselves, don’t work with each other. When that’s the case, it can be easy to miss that individual incidents are tied together or related. 

It’s more important than ever for tools and teams to work together, correlate data in a meaningful way and show what’s happening in the computing environment. Misdiagnosed problems not only waste company time, but they also can create a bad experience for customers and negatively  impact business.

Here are four areas of consideration:

1. Secure network performance

Security must be embedded in everything a business does. The growing number and sophistication of security threats in the network are not going away, according to Accedian’s Michael Bacon, Director of Enterprise Solutions Marketing. These threats have a downstream effect on business performance, end user experience, the quality of service, and even impact service-level agreements.

Service availability drives change. Companies need to be able to see what could go wrong before it even happens. It’s not just about monitoring, but also being more proactive and predicting what might happen, and being able to act to stop it or mitigate the risk. As a business deploys applications into the cloud, security has to be built into the model.

Enter secure network performance. It entails managing performance and building in the security that’s needed along the way. Security is not being added as an afterthought. Threats can be caught–even before something bad happens.

2. Security expertise

This is the elephant in the room. It’s causing companies to reevaluate the way they do things, how they manage their networks, and how they provide security, especially when they don’t have security skills in-house. Right now there’s a move to consolidate performance and security teams in small to midsize companies for financial and operational efficiency reasons.. 

Converting or retraining employees can make sense in some cases. The performance person is intimately aware of the network and how the network works. When there’s a security event, work needs to be done on both sides to not only remediate the risks, but also to enhance the experience the customer has through a unified front.

Security expertise can also be enhanced through intelligent tools that simplify the management of network issues and reduce the need for detailed skills. The benefits of newer technologies and tools are immense in that the need for specialists are reduced and a performance person could actually get to a root cause issue that may be security related or vice versa.

3. Network changes

This is not your grandfather’s network. Networks are changing and because of that organizations need to change too. It is no longer about just speeds and feeds, and is more about user experience and optimization. Performance is always going to be an issue in a network. The problem now is that security incidents transcend across security and performance. Metrics need to be examined and data needs to be correlated. Most of all the user experience has to be protected.

When correlation is built into security tools, it reduces the noise and allows companies to focus on the key or critical incident. Another thing to look for is a tool that has all the performance  KPIs and security KPIs in one place. 

A network needs to be self-aware and recognize anomalies and patterns of behaviors that could introduce risks. It needs to be aware of what’s going on at all times and act before a threat destroys your reputation as a company or destroys your business goals. As an example; an under performing manufacturing network can cost you a lot of money through lost productivity and operational inefficiencies. An under performing health care network can cost people their lives, because every microsecond matters. An under performing financial network could result in millions of lost stock transactions for every second of delay. That’s why companies need the right technology integrated in a single platform.

4. Benefits of converged NetSecOps

Having a separate security team from an operations team introduces new challenges. They don’t speak the same lingo, they don’t have the same skills, and they don’t use the same tools. Why does this matter? It’s an issue that comes up a lot and it means solving problems takes longer. The longer it takes to solve a problem, the more costly it is.

Converged network operations and security (NetSecOps) has many benefits. Consolidation of tools, processes and skills help not just in terms of efficiency, but also driving down cost, as well as risk. When information is tied together, teams can solve network problems faster. That’s critical. Gartner group has said for years that every minute of downtime can cost a company $5,600 per minute.

Our Solution Marketing Director, Michael Bacon, believes this number to be higher, and so do I.

Companies should think about downtime, which includes intangibles immune to metrics. Consider customer reputation, or reputation in the market, or how many customers are lost in terms of churn. It all comes down to the people, the tools and the processes. 

The best approach is a unified network–becoming one team in the network. Consolidate tools, processes and best practices. That drives more value to your customers, saves money and reduces risks. 

Of course, it always comes down to the people. Make sure your teams are trained to do what they need to do. Make sure they’re collaborating across your organization.

Learn more about improving customer experience, proactively identifying threats and building a highly collaborative and effective IT team with our webinar, A Bright Future or the Perfect Storm?