The Record - Issue 20: Spring 2021

53 V I EWPO I NT J U L E S MAR T I N : M I ME CA S T C ybersecurity has a complexity issue. As security vendors continue to stock the metaphorical shelves with innova- tive new solutions that protect rapidly evolv- ing infrastructures, many organisations have amassed unwieldly collections of security controls in their shopping carts. According to research conducted by ESG, more than half of organisations run 30 or more security tools. Though they may be best-of-breed solutions, these controls often don’t work effectively together or don’t fit into the context of an organisation’s security maturity, strategy and even personnel. It’s natural to think that more technology equals more protection, but grow- ing complexity can often have the opposite effect by dragging down security and IT teams as they spend more time and resources on man- aging tools than they do fighting the adversary. Therefore, convergence and consolidation are crucial moving forward. Security vendors are moving towards new levels of built-in integra- tions delivered on top of well-architected plat- forms, thus offering security teams a path to consolidation. This consolidation is increasingly strengthening security controls while optimising operations – and it’s happening in all areas of security. Take email security, for example. While email security was originally thought of in terms of secure email gateways, it has evolved to pro- tect against much more sophisticated threats like phishing, impersonation attacks, business email compromise attacks, post-delivery det- onation and brand exploitation, to name a few – thus creating mini platforms of value around email security. As these mini platforms progress, security architects now have a path to combine best-of-breed security with converged platforms that can strengthen security posture while opti- mising and simplifying operations. No one platform will ever provide every nec- essary control, so integration between plat- forms will remain critical. The burden falls on security vendors and partners to make this happen for the customer. Platform vendors must architect their platforms with integration in mind and develop relationships with other core security platform providers. This can lead to out-of-the-box integrations and the creation of an ecosystem that offers security teams a fast and effective means of implementing an inte- grated security architecture. Mimecast has architected such a platform. Through our industry-leading open application programming interface program, we’ve part- nered with dozens of the world’s industry leaders, including Microsoft, in related security and com- puting disciplines to construct a purpose-built, cloud-first mini platform that’s also integrated into the larger ecosystem. For organisations, this frees up valuable time once spent on han- dling multiple solutions, consoles, and recurring security orchestration, automation and response issues, thus reallocating resources to tackle the most pervasive threats. Jules Martin is the vice president of ecosystem and alliances at Mimecast Security for efficiency and efficacy Security platforms used in isolation are not enough – integration between solutions is essential to ensure the cybersecurity of businesses