Although technology used for computation and storage has been migrating to the cloud, company perimeter networks have largely remained on-premises.

As the world continues to undergo a rapid digital transformation, the time for change has finally arrived.

Forward-thinking leaders understand that software has become a strategic asset. The challenge lies in managing it and enforcing security across the enterprise - regardless of user, location or device.

Challenges that companies face in regard to the migration of perimeter networks to the cloud

As recently as ten years ago, companies built their networks based on the idea of the classic network perimeter, driven by the theory—inside is trusted and outside must be verified. This implied that moving data and applications outside the data center and into the cloud infringed on the concept of the network perimeter.

Operating outside the perimeter meant the loss of control over user access and data security, and IT infrastructure teams resisted migrating to the cloud. Today, we see an exodus from retail stores and office spaces and a movements towards agile, remote infrastructure. It is unlikely that we will see a shift from moving to multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud environment. Companies operate in the hybrid IT environment. The network perimeter is dissolving and the cloud security is a top priority for companies yet again.

• Mobile has surpassed desktop as the primary way to access the internet. Data on our phones can be compromised off site and then brought onsite.

• The number of IoT devices is estimated to triple in the next 6 years.

• 27% of traffic is bypassing perimeter security and flowing directly from mobile and portable devices to the cloud, according to Gartner.

As companies increasingly operate in a perimeter-less network environment, the main challenge for the technology organizations is to build a fluid and agile cybersecurity model. In other words, organizations need the right service model and the right team to develop and implement a customized computing environment.

One of the approaches to making this happen involves designing identity-first, location-independent solutions. For example, network teams have been shifting the focus from network to machine identity-driven solutions such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and CLM (Certificate Lifecycle Management) that help companies take complete control of all digital assets and enable secure online communication regardless of where they are located.

Risks introduced by the perimeter-less environment and abundant and require careful attention and mitigation. For example, within multi-tenant environments, there is a possibility of a data leakage, or one tenant could be a high-profile cyber attack target.  

Identifying solutions and implementing them at scale

We are operating in multi-domain environments in which each domain can use different security, privacy, and trust requirements and potentially use various mechanisms, interfaces and semantics. AlphaMille’s recommendation is to create a comprehensive policy-based management framework as the first step that any business should take. We call it adaptive policy integration. While it is not trivial to establish an integrated, trust-based, secure interoperation framework that helps establish, negotiate and maintain trust, taking advantage of cloud-based services is nearly impossible without it. As businesses work through the interoperability challenges, they need to design and develop robust authentication and identity management protocols. The challenges of having a robust and secure, remote-ready infrastructure will not diminish in the post-pandemic world.