Education is key to cybersecurity

MANILA, Philippines - The ubiquity of connectivity and cloud computing has brought a mixed bag of delights and woes. While the digital domain promises increased convenience for contemporary workplaces and enterprises, it is also replete with landmines awaiting the uninitiated and just plain careless.

Understandably, just as there’s no rest for the wicked, those tasked with safeguarding an organization’s vital information cannot drop the ball. This is certainly case for the folks of cybersecurity leader Symantec Corp.

Boasting the world’s largest civilian security intelligence network, the Mountain View, California-based firm insists any meaningful effort toward protecting against a myriad of threats such as ransomware, remote access trojans, advanced persistent threats (APTs) and zero-day attacks cannot happen without the engagement of a company’s users.

“A lot of times, it’s not just about technology, but people and processes as well,” says Tan Yuh Woei, senior director for the ASEAN region at Symantec.

Recently in town, the executive maintains in a press conference: “If we can raise the awareness and capability of an organization... a lot of problems will be reduced, and then our advanced threat protection capability will make it more difficult for undesirable people to compromise the environment.”

Seeing the bigger picture is something that Symantec is obviously taking seriously.  It acquired two training firms in an earnest bid to bolster its virtual-reality platform that enables individuals to see through a hacker’s eyes for heightened appreciation of what compromises security.

Blackfin Security and its “hacker training unit” Hacker Academy have the end-goal of bridging the security skills gap for enterprise customers.

For example, narrates Yuh Woei, Symantec has “a capability that allows an organization to send out fake phishing email to staff and monitor how many bite the bait by clicking to access the phishing website.” From here, the firm can glean an accurate assessment of its people’s security awareness – or lack thereof.

In a release, Symantec says that “security professionals can no longer rely on using individual point products at each control point to stop (threats). The process of uncovering threat data across endpoint, network and email gateways is manual and time-consuming, which gives attackers an edge. Symantec ATP (advanced threat protection) correlates suspicious activity across all control points and prioritizes the events that pose the most risk to an organization. Once a critical threat is identified, it can now be quickly contained and new instances can be blocked.”

The solution, Symantec continues, affords four crucial abilities to enterprise customers: “Uncover a full range of threats across endpoint, network, and e-mail, with cross-control point detection and environmental search; prioritize what matters most by correlating the threat intelligence from across local control points with what… Symantec sees globally through its massive telemetry; remediate… threats fast through (endpoint containment and blockage of) new instances across control points, with one click, from a single console; and leverage existing investments in Symantec Endpoint Security and Email Security.cloud, without deploying any new endpoint agents.”

“Symantec has always had a grasp of technology. Today, we are streaming them together to help defend your organization,” underscores Yuh Woei. “ATP is just one part… (and you) just flick a switch to engage the most advanced threat protection. You don’t even have to change your endpoint antivirus protection,” he says.

As one would correctly assume, banks, retailers, and government agencies are among the institutions commonly in the crosshairs of hackers. But did you know that even healthcare organizations are targeted? Yuh Woei describes it as “one of the most compromised environments.”

To be fair, Symantec isn’t touting the ATP as a single solution against a universe of threats. Yuh Woei observes that an average enterprise might employ up to 75 distinct security products. “Fighting cybersecurity issues needs an ecosystem,” he says.

“What we are trying to put across is that Symantec is able to simplify and minimize the effort and make it a lot easier for people to work and protect themselves. Organizations buy a lot of products and tech… but people might forget that just to operate them is not easy. (There needs to be) training and enablement… The process need to be thought through. It’s not a one-size-fits all thing,” Yuh Woei says.

But Symantec ATP is making its case for being the most effective protection. “It won’t just tell you there’s a problem, isolate and trace how much as spread but how to solve it… Help is a click away,” insists Yuh Woei. “Before ATP, you had to run around. Now you just right-click and remove.”