To Watch the Data…You Have to See the Data

What is most important for an effective watch the data posture? Visibility.

Visibility into every user, device, subnet, cloud instance, OT, and IoT device. If you do not have real time visibility into every portion of your digital enterprise, including cloud, industrial systems, and IoT, then your business will never be secure.

Of course, achieving this visibility is only getting more difficult and complex as more devices join networks and next-generation ways to store or use data off the enterprise system emerge.

To link back to my kindergarten model, the kindergarten teacher is constantly instructing the class, while scanning the room for children that are not acting how they should and correcting them when they are being disruptive. Even when a group of children are involved in an activity outside the classroom, say at recess (think cloud), a teacher is still monitoring the children and ensuring they are safe and acting appropriately.  

Unlike the kindergarten scenario, a company’s digital enterprise is constantly changing, with users, data, devices, protocols, and systems constantly coming on and offline. This complexity strains human security teams, as the strive to gain adequate visibility and awareness into and of their networks.

To properly monitor these diverse and evolving environments, security teams will increasingly need AI-powered tools that can not only monitor devices across diverse complex environments in real-time, but update their understanding of ‘normal’ as normal changes for the business.

My next article will cover an additional key element for an effective watch the data model.