The equation of cyber security

Is there such a thing as an equation on cyber security?

Today, you can, for as little as 1 USD, buy Fraud-as-a-Service, or even as a non-skilled hacker hack your way through private user accounts. We cannot discard the fact that we live side by side with very experienced and highly skilled cyber criminals: The fraudsters, the hackers and all the malware.

Fraudsters have spent decades building systems that can crack, hack and destroy most security systems. And we are always at risk of being one step behind, meaning we are fighting an unfair (cyber) war between good and bad. Users and companies need to look for a sublime cyber defense, and the true question is this: How can you make sure that you are one step ahead of the increasingly successful fraud businesses out there? There are many companies who have defined a cyber security strategy in case they are attacked, but many of those strategies are not updated at the same speed as the cyber threats becoming more and more intelligent.

Simplifying the notion of evolving security

In extension to this, online businesses need to make sure that their customers and users are still experiencing a smooth and frictionless digital journey. Businesses still have to make sure that their customers are not bothered by security rules such as login, extensive passwords lengths, challenge responses and hurdles of 2FAs. And the reason is that all of these security measures can and will create friction and make some customers abandon their online journey. One conclusion stands out: We need to accelerate security at the same speed as technology and the rising cyber threats, because it seems that we are often a step behind the fraudsters. 

In order to simplify the notion of evolving security at the same speed as technology, cyber security specialists, analysts and researchers of cyber threats tried to solve cybercrime with a mathematical equation. This is what their equation looked like:

But this equation may have lost validity, because technology has evolved faster. Therefore, the equation has been developed further:

Source: IBM

The updated equation is trying to match the speed of technology, but maybe an equation is not what we need to solve cybercrime in practical terms. However, the initial equation does tell us that today’s security has become less efficient, because we are not improving security at the same rate as technology – unquestionably leaving a gap between us/security and them/technology. We need a new way of thinking to solve the equation. 

Let’s take a look at some security rules and ways of thinking, which can be deemed as outdated:

• Security must be a centralised force
• Install security agents on everything
• Try to stop all known bad activity 
• Manually remediate – done by actual people
• Use security software and hardware
• Perform regular compliance checks.

If security is to be transformed, taking a different path and adapting new rules could be a way to try to keep up with technology. 

With ReTrust, we have defined a new set of security rules:

• Implement a zero-trust security model
• Use cloud native security services
• Define policies by service, name and groups
• Only allow “normal” activity 
• Monitor compliance constantly
• Create a trust score for all individual users online
• Automate response with orchestration
• Let AI detect identify fraud.

By rewriting the rules, we can look at and deploy security in a new way. We need to get rid of the old mentality stating that security is handled manually and done on an ad hoc basis.

Through cloud-based intelligence, backed up by AI and patented machine learning, Trusteer provides a holistic approach to identifying new and existing customers without negatively impacting the user experience. Over 500 leading organisations rely on Trusteer to help enable and secure their customers’ digital journey and support their business growth. In doing so, Trusteer runs over 45 billion application logins monthly and over 1 billion user sessions monthly.

Do you want to step into the future of security?

Start today and make sure your security is done on a parallel path that is highly automatic and does not bother your customers. And the key takeaway here is to make security more scalable.

Book a personal meeting with one of our security specialists and learn more about how ReTrust can improve your online business: https://retrust.global/