Covid19 & CyberSecurity

Note: The views in the article below are personal and my own and does not necessarily reflect those of my employers or the organizations that I am associated with.

Am sure we are all wondering when the current lockdown would end and we would be able to go about our lives freely as before.

This #Covid19 has literally changed a lot of things that we kind of took for granted . First and foremost it put more emphasis on Hygiene, Inspection, Social Distancing, Self quarantine, etc. A lot of this has been new for us and we are learning to understand and live with it to combat the massive enemy in the form of this virus, which has impacted not just our but global lives and economy.

As I kept pondering, I realised that the world of Cybersecurity and more so what we as Palo Alto Networks do everyday, is in a lot ways similar. Even here, there are these Threat Actors ( read #Covid19) who have been creating havoc with organisational systems worldover over the years. Everyday we keep reading about a new malware, a new ransomware attack, phishing attack, etc which literally cripples corporate networks and also puts organisational reputations at risk.

Traditionally, organisations have built their systems and applications within their DataCenters and users used to access these systems and applications within their DataCenter. There used to be a firewall, typically port / protocol based approach to enable or disable users. Then as user requirements changed, with advent of agile methodologies like Cloud, mobility, etc, the Threat Landscape also increased manifold. Just as in our personal lives, in our professional lives too, we started taking mobility and access for granted. Thats where, these Threat Actors (read#Covid19) started getting more automated and started hacking into organisational networks through their mobile users, cloud based applications, public cloud, etc.

So just like in #Covid19, where we are practicing Self Hygiene, Social Distancing, etc, even in the Corporate side, we need to ensure that our Corporate DC, Cloud footprints, mobile users are all made secure . Consistent Security is the Hygiene equivalent in corporate world that we all need to ensure, whether the data / user is in the Corporate DC, Cloud ( Public, Private, Hybrid / Multi) or Endpoints. There has to be Cybersecurity solutions in place which will enable Corporates to have this kind of Consistent Security. Palo Alto Networks is the leader in this aspect with its vision to make the world more safe and secure each day than the day before. 

The Next Generation Firewall from Palo Alto Networks becomes the first level of defense and with various subscriptions like Threat Prevention, URL Filtering, Global Protect, Wildfire, etc, this NGFW performs the first level of inspection of any traffic. Just like Police today verifies each and every individual for various factors, like travel history, contact with affected personnel, etc, this NGFW using its APP ID, USER ID and Content ID features inspects all traffic before allowing them in the corporate networks. A virtual form factor of same, does a similar exercise for Cloud traffic. The Wildfire Sandboxing solution helps Quarantine bad actors and ensure that they are not allowed to propagate malware. Twistlock solution from Palo Alto Networks, helps secure Containers just like Social Distancing helps protect us in our day to day lives currently. The Demisto SOAR solution from Palo Alto Networks, helps in terms of reducing the number of alerts by stitching together multiple feeds and automating routine tasks thereby ensuring minimal manual intervention. This is similar to the lockdown of areas that the Police is automatically doing currently whenever they see clusters of people infected with the #Covid19 virus. Police Control Rooms are equivalent to the SOC (Security Operation Center) from where they could monitor and accordingly mobilise resources for the larger good.

Am sure this time would pass and we would all collectively emerge stronger, more connected and richer by this experience and defeat this #Covid19 virus just like in the Corporate World, Palo Alto Networks are determined to fight the Threat Actors (read #Covid19) using their Prevention based Solution and prevent successful Cyberattacks and thus make the world more safe and secure each day than the day before.