Free Talking - Episode 1

10 June, 2021, by Natasha Free

Is Security A Business Blocker

Listen in to hear Natasha Free answer the question: "Is Security A Business Blocker?"

Transcript

Questioner: Welcome to our "Free Talking" podcast series. In today's episode, we ask the question "is security a business blocker?"

Natasha: I'd argue that you can't do business without security. How do you keep your customer information and IP safe? I think a lot of the negativity around security is around the user experience. Productivity can certainly take a hit if you make it too difficult for people to do their jobs.

Natasha: But there are new innovations all the time. Adaptive Access is an interesting one which really speaks to the mantra of right people, right access, right data, right time. Adaptive Access will throw up another level of authorisation - a step-up authentication if the data it has doesn't match what the user is trying to do. So, say, someone is logging on from a different IP address, a different device, it's the wrong time of day because they normally work nine-to-five UK hours and now there's someone trying to log on in the middle of the night. So what that does is, it helps to provide a more frictionless access. So in that respect, security is no longer a blocker.

Natasha: Another approach is to look at security everywhere. It should enable your business. It shouldn't be seen as a blocker. When you goes on holidays, you wouldn't bolt your door tight then leave your windows wide open. So you need a holistic approach. You need to consider people and you need to consider process. Does your DevOps team factor security right from the start? You might have a really good password policy but Dan from Accounts is still writing his password on post-it notes. People need to be involved. Your monitoring might be awesome. People might actually look at it from time to time. but what about early threat detection?

Natasha: All of these things are not a blocker, they allow you to secure your business and know that your customers are going to be happy, your data is going to be safe, your IP? Nobody, except the people you want to get to it, can get to it. Sure there's a cost associated with that and it may seem like a blocker to some, but I kinda look at it like an insurance policy. You hope you are never going to need it to pay out.