Cyber Defense Magazine - Annual RSA Conference 2019 - Print Edition

To understand how this can work,
think of how water delivery works.
Everyone in the community
shares the same water main.
If there’s a crack, everyone
downstream gets dirty water. But
what if we replaced that shared
main with a dedicated pipe for
each customer? Then a single
pipe means a single person gets
dirty water while everyone else is
unaffected. It’s a nuisance, not a
community-wide crisis.
Now apply that model to the way
we deliver IT services like apps,
networking, and cloud. By giving
each user their own dedicated,
secure session—or pipe—we
can limit the impact of a breach to
that specific session and prevent
it from spreading across the IT
environment and organization.
It’s a simple concept: we define
user identity by role, not device
or location. That individual
identity determines the set of
services each user receives.
Because identities and services
are assigned individually, one
user’s compromised session
can be terminated without
affecting other users. It’s a bad
experience for one person—not
the whole business. Two people,
actually; the hacker will be pretty
frustrated as well.
Keeping it simple
Remember, part of our goal is
to make security both simpler
and more effective. Shifting
focus from apps to infrastructure
does both. Instead of worrying
about thousands of unique
and diverse points of entry—
your apps—you can focus on
creating the best pipe possible,
test it thoroughly, and then roll
it out across your organization.
As patches become available, a
standardized pipe makes them
easier to test before deployment;
meanwhile, your individualized
delivery infrastructure acts as a
buffer to keep any breaches from
infecting the whole network.
That holistic approach means
you’re dealing with one delivery
infrastructure, not a constantlygrowing,
ever-changing set of
apps and services. And you don’t
have to worry about buying,
configuring, and managing an
endless stream of security point
solutions.
It’s not hard to make the change
from app-centric security to a
secure delivery infrastructure.
First, make sure you have
consistent visibility across your
infrastructure, and take an
inventory of the way services are
delivered in your business. Then
use this knowledge to figure out
the best way to ensure end-toend
protection from services to
user.
For too long, hackers have held
structural advantages that make
cybersecurity tenuous at best,
as well as costly, labor-intensive,
and frustrating for users and IT
alike. It’s time to stop playing this
losing game of cat-and-mouse.
By focusing on a secure delivery
infrastructure, you can make
breaches harder to accomplish,
less rewarding for hackers, and
less damaging for users and your
business.
Stan Black, Citrix SVP, chief security and information officer
Stan Black, CISSP, is the SVP and Chief Security and Information Officer
at Citrix where he is in charge of the secure delivery of applications and
data. A key component of that is creating a security strategy to deliver
experience, security and choice to customers and employees. That
flexibility enables workers to be secure and productive from anywhere,
anytime.
Black and his global technology and security team, a combination of
security and IT teams, stop 54 billion attacks per quarter. His organization
also monitors the global threat landscape and manages incident
response and physical security to protect the safety of Citrix employees.
Black is a seasoned security veteran with more than twenty five years of
experience in cyber security, reducing business risk, threat intelligence,
corporate data protection, infrastructure simplification and crisis
management. His experience has provided him the opportunity to
deliver durable security and risk solutions to global 1000’s, countries
and public agencies around the world.
Follow Stan on Twitter: @StanBlack19 or visit the Citrix website!
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