With more businesses committed to the cloud, we all need to be asking questions about where our data is stored, how it’s accessed, how data is regulated as it crosses international borders, and how threats are detected, mitigated or (hopefully it doesn’t come to this) remediated.

Security is a business and needs to be treated like one. Instead of getting into the technical weeds and trying to solve security problems with tactics, businesses need a smart strategy. That starts with asking the right questions and up-leveling the conversation with the goal of getting to the heart of a problem to put an end to it.

As found in a recent study by Citrix and the Ponemon Institute:

All of these statistics show the same thing – businesses are still trying to solve security business challenges with tactics, instead of looking at the big picture. The industry itself needs to adopt a more proactive, preventative mindset, and build security into solution architectures. Only by doing that can businesses get back to the core of their business and let IT companies worry about IT.

Prevention Trumps Detection
As businesses get smarter about security, we’re going to see them taking a closer look at prevention technologies rather than detection. This will move the industry to a more strategic level, versus tactical problem-solving through traditional detection and analysis services that merely confirm that you have a problem. (Not helpful!) Organizations need to know where to find the solution and what they can do about the problem. These are the business-level questions that need to be addressed first.

In the next couple of years, we’re going to see more adoption of prevention technologies that incorporate machine learning and predictive analytics that identify normal versus abnormal behaviors. The process of behavior analytics will be automated to proactively identify anomalous behaviors, flag them, and require additional credentials to “pass go.” As more businesses adopt and become familiar with cloud security and emerging technology best practices, trust is going to become a measureable outcome.

Don’t Underestimate Trust
For the first time, we’re seeing that trust can be delivered across the hybrid infrastructure without ten layers of detection and "deterrents.” In the next year, we’re going to see a leap towards simplification of infrastructure, and removal of security technologies that aren’t adding value.

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Going back to the Ponemon study, respondents said that the top two goals of a new security framework include a unified view of users across the enterprise (53%) and the ability to keep up with new or emerging attacks (48%). These are business-level strategic objectives that can be solved by simplifying infrastructure and creating more visibility.

This simplification is going to naturally lead to a more unified view across the enterprise. The goal is to give IT a glass wall where they can easily see what’s happening across the enterprise and address issues in real-time. The outcome of that will be a more strategic security organization that can stop threats before they become breaches.

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