How to Build a Cybersecurity Mesh?

Are you interested in learning how to build a cybersecurity mesh?

The landscape of technology has transformed majorly in the last few years. The latest technological advancements have also affected the operation of businesses and this shift in usage trends has given rise to new concerns. The top on the list is cybersecurity.

The security breach of an internal network at Ubers and the ransomware attack on a medical center in Texas in September 2022 are some of the latest cyberattacks, highlighting the issue’s significance.

Why Build a Cybersecurity Mesh Architecture?

Today, businesses rely heavily on multi-cloud infrastructure and edge computing for reliable, scalable, and efficient data storage and processing. 

Although bigger organizations with complex IT infrastructure may find it difficult to completely migrate to fully decentralized systems, they are pushing for a more distributed business model.

For the previous few years, the remote working model is also getting increasingly popular among enterprises that are either going for a completely remote or a hybrid working environment for their employees. 

Nevertheless, the horizon of such companies is extending beyond a fixed perimeter with a distributed workforce.

The expanded business network and resources call for equally distributed yet robust security strategies. Cybersecurity mesh is one such cybersecurity solution for distributed technology and business models.

Let’s see what is cybersecurity mesh, how to build one, and the related advantages.

What is Cybersecurity Mesh?

Cybersecurity mesh is an architectural approach to ensure the security of remotely distributed assets. The security approach is scalable, flexible, and reliable. The four main layers of cybersecurity mesh are: 

Security Analytics and Intelligence 

It focuses on using security tools that detect cyber threats and vulnerabilities, trigger appropriate responses to these threats, etc. The insights from the data collected from these tools help in better understanding the current security protocols and improving them further. 

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Distributed Identity Fabric

It helps distinguish between the actual network users and the malicious attackers. It provides decentralized identity management, identity proofing, adaptive access control, etc.

Consolidated Policy and Security Posture Management

It is a central point for the security department of the organization to control the security protocols everywhere.

Consolidated Dashboards

These dashboards provide a comprehensive view of the whole system and allow security teams to take timely actions when required.

Build a Cybersecurity Mesh 

Next, let’s see how you can build a cybersecurity mesh for your organization.

As stated, cybersecurity mesh is a composable and scalable approach to ensure maximum security of IT resources whether remote or on-site through an integrated security framework. You can adopt certain practices to enforce such a security mesh in your organization. 

Some of these security practices are the following:

Identify Your Attack Surface 

The foremost task is to analyze your current system for security gaps and vulnerabilities. This includes all your organization’s assets, including computing resources, storage, and sensitive data.

Next, you will prioritize the significance of each resource along with the severity of the associated risks. Such a detailed analysis will help you put more effort where it’s required.

Invest in Reliable Security Tech Stacks and Tools

Implement a detailed security system through reliable technologies. This will include digital security protocols, software analysis, monitoring tools, counterattack software routines, etc.

You will likely choose from the following tech stacks for your enterprise security:

Information Security:

Information security ensures that your business data is safe and secure from any unwilling leakages and unwanted breaches. Some techniques to ensure information security are data loss prevention and email security.

Your security team can implement data loss prevention measures to stop the unwanted transfer of data out of the organization. This includes extensively labeled data storage, access, and sharing protocols.

Email security focuses on securing email communications from cyberattacks like phishing, spam emails, viruses, etc.

Authentication Protocols:

Authentication protocols help in implementing application-level security. Authentication techniques like password management and multi-factor authentication help ensure no unauthorized users enter your organization’s system.

MFA uses a secondary device to authenticate and let in an authorized user, whereas password management focuses on the timely updation of user account credentials with stronger passwords, etc.

Perimeter Security:

Perimeter security guarantees your organization’s internal system and networks are secured from the external environment. Application firewalls and unified threat management ensure such perimeter security.

Your security team can implement a unified threat management system through intrusion detection, spam detection, content filtering, etc., to prevent any attacks from entering your premises.

A web application firewall ensures cloud security too by securing communication and data transfer between your cloud resources and user applications.

Network Security:

Network security includes timely monitoring of the network. Continuous network monitoring enables the security team to proactively identify vulnerabilities and threats and take preventive security measures.

Your security engineers can implement systems like SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and NDR (Network Detection and Response).

The monitoring of entering and leaving traffic data packets helps in actively detecting malicious data traffic and running the appropriate countermeasures. SIEM tools alert of any unauthorized access into the network or suspicious network activities like multiple failed login attempts, etc.

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It further stores all the data related to security threats and alerts in a centralized database that then security team members can access and mitigate effectively.

Endpoint Security:

Endpoint security is becoming important for businesses with an increasing number of interconnected devices. According to Statista, there will be 30.9 billion interconnected digital units worldwide by 2025.

Your cybersecurity team can ensure IoT security through several practices. For example, implementing a domain name system (DNS) will stop malicious traffic from unauthorized sites from entering your interconnected network. 

Similarly, maintaining an MDR (managed detection and response) will help your security personnel to timely detect vulnerabilities in and respond to any threats entering your network through any endpoint.

Your security team can also employ persistence detection. In persistent cyberattacks, attackers enter the vulnerable system and wait for the right opportunity to attack the network. 

Security engineers look for such intrusions by regularly collecting and analyzing data related to the persistent processes. 

Backup and Disaster Recovery:

A backup and disaster recovery solution is important to recover all the important business data in the case of unfortunate security incidents.

Your security team together with the business development team, will map out a backup and disaster recovery strategy using the appropriate software solutions.

Your cybersecurity team can efficiently implement the above system and data security techniques and protocols using the right software tools. Some of these are listed below:

• Cisco Meraki for a unified thread management system.
• Cloudflare for implementing web application firewalls for cloud security.
• DUO for multi-factor authentication protocols.
• Backify for business data backup and recovery. It is a SaaS solution.
• Cisco Umbrella for DNS implementation and maintenance
• Huntress for persistence detection.
• Qualys for efficient security information and event management, etc.

Using Interoperable Technologies

While devising cybersecurity strategies, it is imperative to adopt a holistic approach and not think about your system and resources in silos. 

One approach to creating such a holistic cybersecurity mesh is to introduce interoperability into your organization’s infrastructure.

Focus on integrating security analytics and associated data whether on the cloud or on-premises. This will allow the security team to efficiently analyze the data traffic and trigger the response security operations.

Decentralize Identification Management

As stated above, remote workforce and hybrid computing environments allow your users to access cloud-based applications from anywhere in the world if they have a stable internet connection.

A decentralized identity management system in place is compulsory to ensure that only authorized users can access and enter the system. 

Authentication protocols, zero trust network security, identity proofing, etc., help in implementing a security system beyond your perimeter security in a cybersecurity mesh.

Centralize Security Policy Management

The IT infrastructure for almost every business is decentralized today with public, private, and hybrid cloud solutions. Multi-cloud may bring in more agility, scalability, etc., for your business, however, cloud services from different providers mean different resource access policies.

Cybersecurity mesh help here in implementing a robust approach to security controls. Consolidated dashboards help in adopting centralized policy management for the enterprise. 

It focuses on introducing flexible security protocols and tools that help in separating policy and decision-making from the implementation and enforcement part.

Policy enforcement is centralized and separated from IT assets, which helps ensure uniform implementation across the processes and resources through dynamic runtime authorization services.

Advantages of Implementing a Cybersecurity Mesh

Adopting cybersecurity mesh architecture will benefit your business in the following ways:

Scalable Security: Cybersecurity mesh enables enterprises to scale and expand their IT infrastructure and maintain consistent security control.

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Better Collaboration: Security persons are able to better collaborate with each other and various security systems that are in the security ecosystem. 

They get a centralized and unified view of the organization’s security and can perform better security analysis, threat detections, mitigation techniques, preventive solutions, etc.

Easier Deployment: Deployment and maintenance of security solutions are very much simplified with a cybersecurity mesh approach. It works on the underlying infrastructure making it more adaptable and flexible for changing business security requirements.

More Efficiency: A security tool built on cutting-edge technologies like machine learning help automate numerous tasks of intrusion detection, sending alert notifications, etc. This gives security professionals more time for concentrating on critical tasks.

Employ Experienced Security Professionals

You will be able to accurately implement the cybersecurity mesh approach in your organization given you have the right expertise and knowledge to do so. 

Your cybersecurity professionals should be familiar with all the latest security threats and their prevention techniques. They should be skilled in cybersecurity frameworks and software tools. They should be able to advise you in developing a robust cybersecurity strategy for your business.

Some of the known cybersecurity frameworks they should know about to implement successfully include:

NIST Framework: National Institutes of Standards and Technology framework, was originally developed for improving the US security infrastructure but now many businesses are using it for the same purpose.

COBIT: Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies framework that integrates cybersecurity protocols into every business process and secures the network.

ISO/IEC 27001 and 27002: International standards for monitoring networks and systems and taking timely threat mitigation steps. 

Planning to Implement a Cybersecurity Mesh?

Cybersecurity mesh helps to promote an identity-centric security approach throughout widely distributed assets. It enhances the existing zero-trust security framework that businesses usually have in place. 

Moreover, cybersecurity mesh promotes an integrated and interoperable security environment that is easy to monitor and scale.

If you, as a business CEO or chief information security officer, want to upgrade your security infrastructure and invest in a cybersecurity mesh, you will need to partner with skilled cybersecurity engineers who are well-versed in cybersecurity tools and frameworks. 

Moreover, they should be familiar with the latest technology trends to help you employ cutting-edge technologies for your IT infrastructure.

Read how to build a cybersecurity tool on our blog here.

If you do not find such professionals in your team, hire from a competent software development company with specialized skills in cybersecurity. DevTeam.Space is such an example. It is a community of field-expert software developers proficient in the latest software development techniques.

You can partner with these skilled software developers for your security project by sending us your initial project specifications via this quick form. One of our account managers will reach out to you for further help.

FAQs on a Cybersecurity Mesh Architecture