When it comes to cybersecurity, you’re either in the crosshairs or you’re already bleeding.

In the past 12 months, 33% of organisations worldwide have experienced a ransomware attack or breach that locked down their systems or data, according to International Data Corp’s latest survey results.

I know that being a CIO or CISO today is no joke.

On one side, you’re faced with a security skills shortage of one to four million people worldwide, depending who you talk to. Budgets are strained. Threats surround you. There have always been regulatory requirements but never so many nor so stringent as now. The complexities of systems, services, applications and identities, in hybrid cloud and on-premises environments, rise towards space like a rocket made from a billion parts, every one of them a split-second from exploding in fiery doom.

Railed against you are hyper-resourced criminal syndicates who attract competent and skilled system administrators and engineers in teams, sometimes rumoured to be state backed, offering you little recourse and no protection if you do fall into their sights. Or, more specifically, the sights of their automated minions who connect them with your unwary users.

Status quo must go

The numerous cybersecurity point solutions that many organisations have and the way they’re set up today offer little hope for salvation. Often disconnected, they provide scant protection.

Simply identifying who is responsible for securing cyber assets in cloud environments — the organisation or the cloud provider — can be challenging enough, particularly considering the ease and speed of spinning up these services, applications and system.

To change your fortunes

But that’s why so many CISOs dream of consolidating the tools and responsibilities into a single pane of cybersecurity glass, defined by a framework, aligned with the business strategy, uniting regulatory compliance and advanced protection, with one throat to throttle. They know if they get it right, with support for their Popia journey and a firm understanding of roles and responsibilities, they secure their full spectrum of cyber assets, networks, users and data.

It’s a process that works better in a framework. Hardening IT resources, identifying weak points and creating resilient environments, including peripherals, e-mail, the Web, endpoints, assessing risks and vulnerabilities to formulate strategies that ameliorate risk, are how we create sustainable, surround cybersecurity.

Since every organisation has a unique combination of network, systems, data and ways of working, each solution to the challenge of securing their environments must be tailored uniquely to them. It is important to use the right best-of-breed solutions, integrated by experienced engineers to optimise data curation, minimise exposure and establish resilience.

Estate-wide surround security

Gaining a single pane of glass into cybersecurity and compliance across the entire estate, particularly activities that require third-party tooling, ensures that we get rapid threat identification and alerts, remediation and effective reporting to support continuous improvement.

With so many moving parts feeding the complexity, as well as intensely resourced, invisible actors threatening us from a multitude of channels, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s all the more reason to organise, comprehensively.