About 35 percent of cybersecurity technologies used by companies in Philippines are considered “outdated” by security and privacy professionals working at these organizations, highlighting the need to constantly invest in cybersecurity infrastructure, according to the latest study by tech giant Cisco.
Based on Cisco’s “Security Outcomes Study Volume 2,” 52 percent of Philippine respondents considered their cybersecurity infrastructure “complex.”
Nonetheless, Philippine firms are addressing this by investing to improve security posture, with 90 percent of respondents saying that their organizations were investing in “zero trust” strategies.
Zero trust involves verifying the identity of each user and device every time they access an organization’s network to reduce the security risk. This approach means that organizations cannot assume that internal entities are trustworthy which, in turn, means continuous verification of a user’s identity is necessary before granting access.
Some 51 percent of local respondents said their organizations were making steady progress with adopting the zero trust approach, while 39 percent said they were at a mature state of implementing such a framework.
In addition, 87 percent of respondents said they were investing in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture, with 46 percent saying they were making good progress with adoption and 41 percent saying their implementation was at mature levels.
SASE combines networking and security functions in the cloud to deliver secure access to applications anywhere users work.
These two approaches— zero trust and SASE—are seen key to building a strong security posture for companies in the modern cloud-first and application-centric world. The Cisco study showed that organizations with mature implementations of zero trust or SASE architectures were 35 percent more likely to report strong security operations than those just starting to implement these.
“Businesses across the globe, including here in Philippines, have seen a huge change in their operating models, driven in large part by the pandemic. As they grapple with changes like a distributed workforce and digital-first interactions, it is imperative for them to be able to connect users seamlessly to the applications and data they need to access, in any environment and from any location. They need to achieve this while being able to control access and enforce the right security protection across networks, devices and locations,” Kerry Singleton, Cisco managing director for cybersecurity in Asia-Pacific, Japan and Greater China.
Juan Huat Koo, director of cybersecurity for Asean at Cisco, said that in today’s digital-led business environment where threats abound, “companies need to ensure they stay ahead of the curve when it comes to cybersecurity.”