Complexity is the enemy of security

Organisations that manage complexity out of their environments gain more value from their IT spends and become more agile since their systems don’t get in the way of business process change. When you reduce complexity, you increase your ability to implement new solutions and you increase the effectiveness of your security.

Hackers are searching for areas where people and processes are not perfect, where gaps provide opportunities for malicious activity. It’s safe to say, the more complex the infrastructure, the more likely areas with exposed vulnerabilities will exist. In contrast, a clean architecture can be secured with a simple, transparent, yet effective security approach that is easy to maintain, audit, migrate and monitor for gaps.

Right about now, you’ll maybe doubt my ‘keep it simple’ mantra, not because you disagree, but because in today’s fast-paced business environments, the very IT innovation we need also brings an avalanche of data and applications to the mix, leaving organisations scrambling to understand, adapt to or provide controls for. As a result, we see the inevitable creation of multiple security policies and with that, increased the potential for misconfigurations or mistakes. It’s tough to keep it simple.

Managing complexity out of your environment should always be a priority, but if complexity is inevitable, then utilising security automation tools such as a SIEM or CASB that manage complex tasks and interdependencies across hybrid infrastructures will reduce your security team’s workload and can bring order through constant monitoring, visibility and self-healing. For maximum agility, choose an automation solution that is capable of making intelligent decisions in real time, based on predefined service level agreements (SLAs).