STEPS FORWARD Q&A: Will ‘proactive security’ engender a shift to risk-based network protection?

By Byron V. Acohido

Something simply must be done to slow, and ultimately reverse, attack surface expansion.

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We’re in the midst of driving towards a dramatically scaled-up and increasingly connected digital ecosystem. Companies are obsessed with leveraging cloud-hosted IT infrastructure and the speedy software development and deployment that goes along with that.

And yet it remains all too easy for malicious hackers to get deep access, steal data, spread ransomware, disrupt infrastructure and attain long run unauthorized access.

I heard a cogent assessment of the shift that must take at the Omdia Analyst Summit at Black Hat USA 2023. In a keynote address, Omdia’s Eric Parizo, managing prinicipal analyst, and Andrew Braunberg, principal analyst, unveiled an approach they coined as “proactive security.”

What I came away with is that many of the new cloud-centric security frameworks and tools fit as components of proactive security, while familiar legacy solutions, like firewalls and SIEMs, can be categorized as either preventative or reactive security. This is a useful way to look at it.

Rising reliance on…