Alan Stoddard, President, Cognyte Situational Awareness Solutions North America explains how security leaders can best position themselves to protect what matters most.

Businesses around the world are more focused on security and safety than ever before. Known threats, such as terrorism and active shooters, continue to be significant challenges, while cybersecurity risks have exploded. Stakes are high and as the impact on businesses increase, the need for proactive, intelligent response increases.

Modern organizations recognize that prior approaches to secure their infrastructure, people and data are no longer ideal. Sophisticated risks require precise oversight and access to the most critical data at the right time to protect what matters most.

Therefore, more security leaders are now seeking new ways to advance security efforts and adopt a holistic approach to realize comprehensive risk management and business continuity.

Information overload

Recently, we’ve seen a sharp uptake in new Internet of Things (IoT) use cases as stakeholders have accelerated their digital transformation efforts. COVID-19 may have propelled these initiatives initially, but the underlying driver is that stakeholders want access to more data.

The ability to transform this raw data into information that can drive intelligent responses is vital and connected, smart devices and systems can provide significant benefits.

The demand for digital transformation has opened the door to a vast amount of incoming data from IoT devices. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of systems and solutions are being supported at any given time.

While many of these technologies are intertwined with other business functions, most are part of the security infrastructure in some capacity. Security leaders need modern ways to capture the information from these platforms, correlate it and then analyze it to make informed decisions.

The influx of information delivers an opportunity for enhanced capabilities and challenges, but it’s important to remember that network-enabled physical security devices are now potential cybersecurity risks.

Therefore, security must be looked at holistically, combining physical and IT security to get the optimal view of the threat scenario. This correlation must happen across technology systems and between internal departments as well.

In mission-critical environments, an integrated response enables comprehensive management of threats. However, security systems often operate in silos, making it impossible to achieve intelligence. In siloed environments, security leaders must manually coordinate data from multiple systems, which is time-consuming, complex and expensive.

A center of intelligence

The idea of intelligent security operations is designed to address this challenge. This concept combines multiple systems and devices into a single interface and exposes it to an analytic layer.

Artificial intelligence-powered solutions automatically identify the critical data needed to see what is happening across an enterprise and then demonstrate the business impact. By unifying information in an automated fashion to protect against and detect risks, there is a more opportunity to realize a predictive threat model.

Collecting intelligence from IP systems such as video surveillance cameras, building systems, motion sensors, mobile devices and more, empowers businesses to identify potential anomalies and manage situations more efficiently.

Businesses with a single enterprise-wide view across disparate systems and technologies experience new levels of situational awareness, lower operational costs and increased employee safety. A centralized approach also allows information to be shared easily with external agencies, employees, citizens and first responders, which is quite valuable when rapid response is necessary.

Additionally, security leaders are empowered to make more efficient, effective and proactive decisions, all of which are needed in today’s fast-paced business environment; it is more critical than ever for a security leader to implement a coherent and cohesive security plan.

A smarter approach to security

Intelligent security operations have become a top priority for security leaders to achieve higher levels of visibility and control, reduce operational costs and comply with regulations.

The concept enables stakeholders to tap into the power of the connected world and promotes collaboration among various stakeholders and departments. It empowers employees to have continuous visibility, detection, response and incident management. Leaders can take this to another level by merging technologies, best practices and services to provide an added layer of efficiency to operations.

The landscape of the business world has changed dramatically over the past three years. We’ve learned that adaptability is critical and the ability to embrace change quickly and effectively improves efficiency and operations.

Embracing the promise of the Internet of Things will allow you to be better positioned to protect all that matters most and provide much-needed peace of mind as you look to the future.

For more information, visit: www.cognyte.com

This article was originally published in the August edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.

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