Dave Patnaik
Head of Asia Pacific & Japan, Forescout
IoT devices expands into numerous industries and lifestyle domains, bringing along massive data for business optimisation and also privy to cyberattacks. Forescout Technologies, a leading provider of automated cybersecurity solutions, presents a new product utilising cyberintelligence to fight hackers’ dark intelligence.
Continuum is the industry’s first automated cybersecurity platform. The platform automates the ongoing identification, evaluation, and governance of cyber assets in order to minimize risk and enhance business automation and efficiency for enterprises operating across increasingly sophisticated digital networks.
CIO World Asia spoke with Dave Patnaik, Head of Asia Pacific & Japan, Forescout on the company’s new product, Continuum and the imperative of aligning business strategy with vendor partnerships.
Megatrends In APAC Cybersecurity
The number of connected devices has been increasing over the past few years and they will continue to grow exponentially. IoT devices like wearable health monitors, smart vehicles, building automation and transportation logistics systems are now being brought online and connected, exposing new threat vectors to organisations and which will provide security professionals with complex challenges.
Covid has also increased a transition to Work from Home or Work from Anywhere set ups. Employees can connect from multiple devices and in multiple locations. This will drive cybersecurity towards automation, AI, and cloud technologies in order to keep pace with the expanding digital terrain in which we live.
Key Challenges And Gaps In Cyber Defence
The cybersecurity talent shortage is a significant gap as Singapore moves forward with its Smart Nation agenda. This challenge runs head-to-head with increased attacks like ransomware and phishing that show little sign of abating and remain a major threat to businesses and individuals. Malicious actors will continue to find new vulnerabilities to exploit – they are almost certainly looking at operational technology and IoT devices as targets. Hence security risks within an organisation are no longer restricted to just the IT environment, but the scope now includes OT/IoMT and various other devices.
As a result, enterprises will need to rely on more automation in their decision-making, including a heavy focus on visualization and analytics of all available data. With the growing market of data analysis and incident response solutions, the challenge in 2022 will shift from technology to management processes for efficient incident response. Many organisations may need to lean into sharing their SOC capabilities with managed service providers (MSPs) to help bridge the gap of this cybersecurity skills shortage.
Malicious actors will continue to find new vulnerabilities to exploit – they are almost certainly looking at operational technology and IoT devices as targets. Hence security risks within an organisation are no longer restricted to just the IT environment, but the scope now includes OT/IoMT and various other devices.
Dave Patnaik, Head of Asia Pacific & Japan, Forescout
Safeguarding Abilities Of Forescout’s Continuum
The sheer diversity and volume of connected devices, operating systems and applications increasingly requires data-driven and automated approaches to cybersecurity. Manual methods are too labour intensive and uneconomic. Forescout’s Continuum platform gives complete coverage – automatically discovering, assessing, and governing access for a wide range of devices, at scale, enabling organisations to better manage risk as their digital terrain rapidly expands.
Agenda For CIOs To Deter Recurrence Of Cyberattacks
CIO’s need to juggle multiple areas; their company’s digitalisation roadmap whilst also considering the cybersecurity risks associated with mergers and acquisitions. Vendor partnerships have grown with importance and help address the skills shortage to a degree. Wrapping this together with business strategy, continuous education and key stakeholders’ sponsorship is key.
A successful attempt in combating a cyberattack deserves a celebration but not going overboard and resting on one’s laurels is key. Cyber defence is a long term strategy with no visible light at the end of the tunnel as of now, however constant vigilance will ensure the continuous celebration of mini milestone victories along the way.