In today's world of omnipresent cyber threats, the question is not about 'if', but rather about 'how and when'. Enterprises face the question of 'how and if' they are resilient enough. The proliferation of enterprise data across a multitude of vehicles like Cloud, IoT devices, service providers etc., leads to an evolving nature of attack surfaces and threat actors emanating from influences of a very divergent mix of political, socio-economic, and sponsored interests.
Enterprises are forced to explore options, which would make their business systems 'smart' –have inherent intelligence, act proactively, analyze in-line, react real-time, and learn to become 'smarter' with time.
Adapting cognitive competencies and capabilities to the domain of applications is key to managing the lifecycle of application infrastructure. An inherently ‘smart application’ is the need of the hour. 'Smart applications', designed with an adaptive architecture to understand behavioral changes, enables appropriate response analytics and results in adequate response and remediation of any potential risks/threats.
'Smart security' designed to enhance user experience, along with adequate controls to secure data and understand transactional behavior with built-in capabilities to automate and orchestrate adequate response is one of the four critical building blocks of smart applications.
The other three are: Smart Interactions (using natural interfaces), Smart Processes (using automation and adaptive intelligence), Smart Platforms (bringing transformational business capabilities into the core of the enterprise).
'Smart security', an integral imperative of smart applications, benefits from a holistic view across various dimensions. Here are the critical factors that make security strong and effective in smart applications:
1. Adaptive authentication: Multi-factor and multi-modal authentication adaptable to all digital surfaces powered by business-driven and behavioral algorithms.
2. Context aware entitlements: Dynamic entitlements-based policies derived from user context, transactional context, environmental context and deep learning.
3. Advanced threat detection: Proactive monitoring and surveillance to detect threat and a smart response system creates improved security driven by NLP and deep learning.
4. Adaptive security architecture: A dynamic environment calls for dynamic risk modeling and security controls.
5. Cognitive cyber defense assurance: It is not enough to have controls and assets in place that raise an organization’s security posture. The bigger questions are, “Are these the ‘right' controls, are they 'fit for purpose'?”. "Do we have a mechanism for dynamic assessment of cyber defense controls? Can we measure the effectiveness of these controls with dynamic changes of threats/risks?" Cognitive cyber defense assurance evolves a dynamic architectural assurance mechanism, which enforces 'Security by Design'.
6. Cognitive cyber defense: Cognitive driven cyber defense platform monitors and detects threats in-line and in real-time with behavioral analytics, which is driven by effective automation and orchestration of the response, resolution and remediation of threats.
7. DevSecOps: Security is integrated into the DevOps cycle and made part of an application’s DNA from the moment its architecture is defined.
Threats can originate from anywhere – users, employees, partners, SaaS/IaaS/PaaS providers, IoT – and will continue to evolve in nature. 'Smart security' is designed to generate behavioral based metrics to inherently adapt and evolve by design, hence enforce 'Security by Design'.
Read more about smart security and smart applications in the latest report - Smart applications: the future of applications
