Why Companies Are Prioritizing Digital Transformation Security
Digital transformation can ramp up agility, scalability, and flexibility for companies pursuing cloud migration, which leads to better customer and employee experiences. But these advantages come with a tradeoff: a significant expansion of the security plane. IT teams are learning that digital transformation security demands prioritization along with the benefits that come by advancing to the cloud.
When digital transformation is pursued without considering how it will impact company culture, customer experiences, and various workloads, companies can run into obstacles. Ignoring the increased cyber security risks with a cloud environment can be a significant misstep in the process.
Digital transformation widens the attack surface, spreading critical data across cloud environments and increasing exposure. In addition, companies are utilizing collaboration tools with business partners and vendors that further increase the risk to security.
Innovation Versus Risk: Any organization pursuing a cloud migration strategy will have to consider their digital transformation security plans and how it will intersect with advances in terms of speed and innovation. With each new technology introduced, a company’s proprietary information, customer data, and systems are all at risk.
Companies are increasingly addressing cyber security risk as a when rather than an if situation. This type of attitude encourages buy-in across your security team, IT, key stakeholders, and every level of employee, and invites them to play an important role in protecting assets.
Key Strategies: There are three basic steps that every company can take to reduce security risk around digital transformation:
Identify Risk: Identifying vulnerabilities across the organization is a laborious process, but must be comprehensive. Be careful to capture areas like shadow IT and unsecured cloud resources that may elude a traditional risk evaluation, as well as the impact of internet of things (IoT) devices that can introduce more risk. Risk assessment should be a regular part of an ongoing security strategy so that when a breach occurs, your company knows where exposure is most likely and how to mitigate the breach quickly.
Develop a Strategy: Your digital transformation security strategy should focus on basic security hygiene that is cloud-native, avoiding practices akin to bolting on security tools and features after the fact. This practice is also known as a “shift left,” pushing security earlier in the consideration of priorities in any digital transformation project.
Invest in Skills: The fast-changing nature of cyber security threats requires a continual approach to investing in training and upskilling for security teams; it’s never going to be checked off on a to-do list. It’s important to keep communication open with the finance team and executives to ensure that investment in training for security remains a priority.
Consider Managed Security: Many companies consider partnering with a managed security provider to be a logical step in any digital transformation process. When you outsource security, you will gain the expertise of specialists in this area that are invested in staying current on all technology and tools available for securing your data and systems. It’s a future-proof strategy that allows your IT team to allocate resources and time elsewhere.
As your company considers digital transformation security within a broader strategy, don’t go it alone. Contact us at One Connect for valuable guidance, insight, and the ability to leverage the best security tools for a successful transformation.