Companies should turn to cloud services for protection, says Gartner

The growing prevalence of cyber security threats has been highlighted at Gartner’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) summit 2015.

At the London-based event the research group outlined how it believes in the likelihood that companies will end up having to utilise cloud-based security services in order to focus on bigger issues.

As we’ve noted before, cyber security is one of the biggest challenges facing the modern business. There are existing schemes ensuring that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are better prepared for digital threats.

However, an article in Computer Weekly covering the summit also discussed Gartner analyst, Earl Perkins, and his belief that firms remain likely to turn to cloud services.

“Businesses need to watch the development of security services from the cloud as we expect these to grow and evolve,” said Mr Perkins, as he explained that a move to the cloud would be crucial to ensuring the success of the Internet of Things.

Gartner believes cloud brokers will be key to seeing the public’s use of the cloud widen, as well as allowing businesses to manage the delivery, use and performance of cloud services.

What next?

According to the research group, context-aware access control is the next step for IAM, as it predicts future machine-to-machine authentication will drive demand.

The group also identified five styles in which to defend against advanced threats - a type of attack that is becoming more commonplace. These styles are: network traffic analysis, network forensics, payload analysis, endpoint behaviour analysis, and endpoint forensics.

“It is important for organisations to understand there is no one approach, service or supplier that is going to solve the advanced threat problem, but a select combination,” said Mr Perkins.

“The key is to match technology capabilities to your organisation’s particular needs and to never spend more on security than the asset it is meant to protect is worth.”

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