Gartner forecasts that by 2024, organizations that have employed a cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA) will have reduced the financial impact of cybersecurity attacks by 90 percent on average. The tech research and consulting firm considers CSMA as one of the tools organizations should adopt to keep up with the rapidly evolving and growing sophistication of cyberattacks.
CSMA has been in the news and online tech publications in recent months. Many sites are sharing useful information about this relatively new cybersecurity technology, and rightly so, with all the benefits it can bring to different kinds of organizations. It is set to significantly improve cybersecurity with its foundational layers, namely consolidated dashboards, consolidated policy and posture management, security analytics and intelligence, and distributed identity fabric.
Learn more about the benefits of CSMA and the reasons why organizations should consider integrating them into their security posture.
Smart and consistent security
Cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA), as mentioned, has four foundational layers that give rise to intelligent security design. These layers allow organizations to build a smart and consistent security architecture and also come up with solutions that address crucial needs. Here’s a brief description of the different foundational layers.
- Security intelligence and analytics – CSMA has a part that is devoted to the collection, aggregation, and analysis of security data obtained through different security controls or software tools. The data obtained and analyzed makes it possible for security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) tools to properly manage possible threats and deploy the most suitable responses.
- Distributed Identity Fabric – In line with the zero-trust principle in cybersecurity, CSMA has a layer that is devoted to proper threat identity and access management. This layer is backed by directory services, entitlement management, identity proofing, and adaptive or dynamic access to intelligently deal with sophisticated threats.
- Consolidated policy and posture management – CSMA also achieves consistent security policies across different environments because it is designed to translate policies, rules, or configuration settings for specific environments or tools including the provisioning of dynamic runtime authorization services.
- Consolidated dashboards – To maximize the results of security policy and posture management, CSMA has consolidated dashboards that enable integrated security visibility into the organization’s full security architecture. These dashboards facilitate the faster detection of threats and the more efficient investigation and response to security events.
Cybersecurity mesh architecture, in a way, provides a framework that allows organizations to set up their security posture in an organized, coherent, and consistent manner. If there are changes needed in response to new developments in the threat landscape, the processes and responses can be systematically revised to make sure that everything works as intended. The changes should not result in defects that become vulnerabilities or weaknesses in an organization’s security posture.
Flexible and scalable security
Given how rapidly organizations undergo change nowadays, it is important for security posture to be correspondingly flexible and scalable. According to Gartner, typical organizations, on average, have gone through five major enterprise-wide changes over the past three years. Also, an overwhelming majority of the organizations surveyed say that they expect more changes to come in the next three years.
As more organizations turn to cloud computing, for example, it is vital to have a cyber defense system that can deal with the new and unfamiliar kinds of threats that will be encountered. Similarly, the need to scale up or down based on the economic situation calls for a security solution that cost-efficiently addresses changing needs, not one that ties an organization to fixed expenses and terms.
CSMA is designed to adjust to the changing security architecture requirements of organizations as they change. New components, solutions, or an entirely new architecture may be added as they become necessary. With this, corporate cybersecurity moves to ensure adequate protection coverage, especially in view of the growing adoption of distributed IT infrastructure.
Easier deployment and integration of security solutions
Cybersecurity mesh architecture provides a stable underlying structure for the use of different security solutions, which entails the more rapid configuration and deployment of new security controls or tools. It is also built to evolve to address shifting business and security needs. The mesh architecture supports security posture agility.
CSMA makes it possible for individual security services to get integrated, allowing them to communicate with each other and provide a dynamic cybersecurity environment throughout the enterprise. Because of this integration or interoperability, organizations can expect significant security improvement as different tools, platforms, or solutions can effectively collaborate, especially when it comes to harnessing their analytical functions. This helps accelerate attack response and mitigation.
Moreover, CSMA reduces expenditures or investments when it comes to the need for specific solutions for specific situations. Again, CSMA allows the rapid deployment of different individual security services and collaboration among different solutions. It is unlikely to have major security spending (due to overhauls or replacements) because CSMA can be revised bit by bit depending on what is needed without changing the primary underlying security infrastructure.
More efficient security
The smart security design, consistent security rules and policies, flexibility, scalability, collaboration, and simplified deployment and management advantages of CSMA ultimately result in material efficiency improvement. As organizations dodge expensive security spending for solution replacements or upgrades, they palpably improve their bottom line and free resources for more important concerns.
Also, the speed by which security solutions are configured and deployed means that there will be minimal opportunities for threat actors to find vulnerabilities they can exploit and breach the cyber defenses of organizations. Cybersecurity mesh architecture lays out a security foundation that not only ensures security efficacy but also reduces costs and boosts detection and response agility.
Preparing for threats in the new cyber threat landscape
TechRepublic considers CSMA as one of the nine emerging technologies that shape corporate strategies in 2022, describing it as a “composable architecture to get stand-alone security solutions to work together to improve overall security.” It is recommended especially in the context of the current cyber threat landscape because it is capable of covering identities that are not within the traditional security perimeter. It provides a holistic view of the security situation of an organization.
The compelling reasons discussed above should be enough for organizations to consider adopting CSMA as part of their security posture improvement plan in response to more complex and increasingly aggressive threats. CSMA offers a practical and adaptable solution to confronting new adversarial tactics and techniques, as it extends an existing security architecture’s range and capabilities.
