Security incidents are often seen as a problem for cyber security teams in most organisations. However, in reality, they impact the entire business and can cause substantial reputational damage. The past several months have reinforced this notion of a "shared fate" when a significant cyber security incident hits the organisation. Therefore, to ensure safety and protection, businesses need to integrate security across every level to ensure critical data stays protected.

Moreover, as organisations accelerate their digital transformation and move to the cloud to meet new and growing customer demands, they need to weave security into their infrastructure, architecture, business workflows, policies, and even their culture. As organisations continue to adjust to Covid-19, to protect their employees' health, continue to serve customers and adapt to rapid changes in business models, the need to assess and mitigate cyber security risks has never been higher.

Every data breach costs an organisation an average of US$3.86 million, according to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute and IBM Security. The study analysed 524 breaches between August 2019 and April 2020 in organisations of all sizes across 17 geographies and 17 industries. The average time to identify and contain a data breach is 280 days.

"Yet, 2020 has been an exceptional year so far," the study notes. "In response to the global coronavirus pandemic that has disrupted so many businesses, economies and lives, many organisations have shifted to remote work models. According to the survey results, 76 per cent of respondents whose organisations have shifted to remote work expect that working from home could increase the time it takes to identify and contain a data breach. Additionally, 70 per cent of respondents expect remote working could increase the cost of a data breach."

Is there a need for organisations, therefore, to reimagine security threats, starting with cyber hygiene, which is the primary protocol that needs to be followed by every employee? It seems so, based on the results of a survey by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) released in August 2020. CSA's cyber security public awareness survey shows that Singaporeans remain concerned about cyber incidents, but there is room for improvement in cyber hygiene.

The majority of respondents showed high levels of concern for cyber incidents, with 82 per cent of them expressing moderate to extreme concern that hackers would control their computer illegally, or that others would obtain their financial information without their consent. However, most continued to believe that such incidents would not happen to them. For instance, while 78 per cent of the respondents were concerned about falling victim to an online scam or fraud, only 27 per cent felt that there was a likelihood that this would happen to them.

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"With our increasing reliance on technology, especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic, opportunistic cyber criminals now have a bigger hunting ground," says Mr David Koh, Commissioner of Cybersecurity and Chief Executive, CSA. "It is important for us to shake off the 'it will not happen to me' mindset, stay vigilant, and take steps to protect ourselves online so that we do not become the next victim."

Cloud Paradox

A common theme from organisations and security leaders is the journey towards the cloud. Many companies see the cloud as the core platform for digital transformation. However, progress is not relatively as fast or smooth. Up to 80 per cent of workloads still remains on traditional IT infrastructure, while more than 90 per cent of organisations continue to be worried about cloud security.

Therefore it is clear that security must be integrated into every layer of the organisation - technology, processes, and culture - and it must happen continuously. That's because many enterprises may have a mix of hybrid and multi-cloud environments including public and private clouds, SaaS applications and traditional IT infrastructure. That would make it a very complex IT environment. On the other hand, traditional security products were created in silos. This has led to an incredibly fragmented security landscape, one that is vulnerable to attacks and breaches.

"Security needs to be reimagined, and a different approach is needed, rather than the current traditional approach," says Mr John Wheeler, VP of Strategy, Innovation, Services and Integrated Solutions at IBM. "The only viable path forward is to re-base security on the principles of open technology. When companies apply an open approach, they can start bringing different security silos together, innovate more rapidly, and source ideas from the community rather than individual vendors."

Mr Wheeler cites an example of one of the top ten largest banks in the world which needed to tap into their massive databases to find insights and enhance security policies. The bank's data security team was able to change the perceptions of the rest of the organisation, from seeing security as slowing things down to an enabler of the business.

The pandemic forced schools and colleges worldwide to be shut, forcing millions of students to either take lessons online (where feasible) or skip the learning process altogether. In another example, one of the largest school districts in the US deployed IBM Cloud Identity to scale up their remote learning environment quickly. That ensured that two million students, staff and parents were able to continue learning and interacting with their educational materials seamlessly and securely.

"The use of IBM Security Guardium Insights, together with data analytics and intelligence across the bank's cloud environments, enabled the security team to look at the whole range of attacks and threats, which couldn't be done before," says Mr Wheeler at the IBM Security Virtual Summit 2020 on Sept 3. "This improved compliance with data privacy regulations and strengthened the bank's understanding which helped unlock new business opportunities."

Another complication is the need to protect a growing remote workforce, thanks to the pandemic. From a security perspective, organisations need to ensure their employees are protected, their back-end processes are secure, and customers can access web-based products and services. According to one study, global spam attacks jumped 43 times in just one month in February 2020.

"From an internal viewpoint, employees, mission-critical applications and business partners within the ecosystem are all using technologies and devices to interact within the enterprise, remotely," says Ms Aarti Borkar, Vice President of Offering Management at IBM Security. "Externally, customers and clients are also interacting with the enterprise virtually throughout the sales cycle, from purchase to post-sales. Together, these two aspects put much stress on a company's ecosystem of networks and devices."

What's the solution? Four dimensions will transform the industry:

On the whole: On an ongoing basis, the telemetry from these technologies must be collected, collated, processed and analysed for actionable intelligence and anomalies. Security teams in organisations need to understand what is happening, analyse the progress that is being made, understand what works and what doesn't, and make enhancements to security plans and protocols. Security, like the cloud and every other technological enhancement, is a continuous journey of discovery and improvement.