B&E: With the evolution of cyber crime how vulnerable are today’s data systems and what can be done to keep them secure?
Mahesh Gupta (MG): Cybercriminals have evolved steadily over the last few years and are increasingly exploiting systems for financial gains. New and changing methods, lack of up-to-date intelligence and global knowledge to prevent such crimes have made system exploits even harder to detect and mitigate. In addition, the problem has compounded with the rapid proliferation of end-user points connected to the network for data access and increased mobility initiatives (use of personal devices) in the workspace.
As we move into an information-driven global economy, the attacks will get stronger and more frequent. Today’s networks must be able to respond to attacks while maintaining availability and reliability. We need to adopt an integrated, adaptive, and collaborative security approach. Such adaptive defences, which are built into the concept of a self-defending network should remain active at all times, perform inconspicuously, minimize propagation of attacks and quickly respond to as-yet unknown attacks. These capabilities can reduce the vulnerability of networks, minimize the impact of attacks, and improve the overall infrastructure availability and reliability. The Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems in the US is meant to control industrial and infra processes. So if someone can control SCADA, he can control the industry. Now India is moving towards the unique identification scheme, which will have personal data base of the population. But how secure are such large data bases from cyber attacks?
MG: It is a big challenge to manage and secure today’s distributed and agile networks. Traditional security relies on layering of products and the use of multiple filters. This is not enough to defend against the latest generation of cyber attackers. However, computer and network security technologies have become increasingly sophisticated to stay one step ahead of ever-evolving thefts of assets and identity. The security has to evolve from the internet perimeter protection to an all-encompassing defence-in-depth model, in which multiple countermeasures are embedded in every layer of the network and integrated into every device. B&E: With traditional security no longer adequate to meet the complex security dynamics, what do you see is the way forward to meet such challenges?
MG: Today’s security solutions are largely centered on protecting the physical infrastructure, and traditional security policy is expressed in terms of a particular device such as “the corporate PC,” an IP address, a network port, or an application protocol. In an increasingly mobile, borderless world, this construct is becoming significantly less relevant. To address the new security dynamics, new security architectures need to more sophisticated. We need a sophisticated policy language that can be expressed in terms of who, what, where, when, and how. Security needs to be separated from the physical infrastructure underneath it. And it needs to be highly distributed so it can be deployed globally and can be available wherever and whenever the borderless enterprise touches the public Internet.
