As 2022 continues to support the "Work from Anywhere" Model we have seen over the past two years, we see IT Security departments around the world struggling to keep their companies secure.  If your entire workforce is remote, or across multiple sites, you can't rely on One Premise Security alone.

This is a trend we have seen in the marketplace for years.  Security vendors have been creating more and more products that rely on cloud hosted services to make sure endpoints that aren't behind a traditional firewall have some kind of protection.  This is a good thing.  For years we were dependent on Agent to Server Communication Intervals to know if systems were secure or protected; if a system hadn't reported in 30 days we couldn't verify whether it was secure, when it might have just not been connected to the network.
And... if that's the security model are you currently working under, you should consider layering your security.  On Premise Security isn't enough if your workforce is around the country and constantly using systems you don't manage fully, or if they are remote at all.  Here's some examples:

• Patching takes longer
  • You're spending more time just dealing with regular patching, and with Security Vulnerabilities being a big problem in 2021, expect this issue to grow in size rather than shrink the coming years.
• When a threat happens, you don't know immediately.
  • With Agent to Server Communications you really only know what happened since the last agent to server communication. With remote systems that communication window grows - and the risk to your business grows.  Having security models that don't require communication with on network servers may be the difference between an outbreak or a blocked malware event.
• You can't always deploy since it requires "on-premise" server permissions
  • In emergencies not having up to date information is key. If you require a VPN being turned on to verify updates are applied, if you can't "push" policy updates, you are left with systems "Hopefully" having the right version.
  • Hope isn't good enough.

So we've hit the reality of 2022 - we need to strongly analyze ways to verify the security process can be implemented, versus "hopefully" will be implemented.  And one of those solutions it to look at cloud-offered solutions, or to have assistance / layers that cover the vulnerabilities of on-premise security technologies.

One of these could be MDR Solutions that work through cloud agent. If you have the ability for human intervention and real time notification occur, you can react accordingly.  Having further capabilities that involve the ability to "push" updates or "lockdown" systems will further mean the gap between security threat -> Outbreak is larger, with more hurdles for attackers to navigate.

The only way to guarantee 100% security is to remove people, computers, and the world.  We can aim for as high a percentage as possible, but we need to plan for the situations where our security alone won't be enough.  We can no longer create a moat large enough to block all security threats, and 2022 is the year to make sure that your business is not.