| | December 20209CIOReviewCHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURESFrom a technology standpoint, underpinning all of this is a modern software-defined architecture. Often, such architectures take advantage of technologies such as flash, scale-out and hyper-convergence of compute, networking and storage resources. Intelligence around such resource disciplines is defined in software. Such infrastructures are largely operated in a self-driving fashion. The enterprise defines its security policies declaratively, i.e. the business declares what is required and the intelligent software-defined architecture executes and maintains compliance with the desired policies at scale seamlessly. With operational and architectural consistency, this can be achieved across both on-premises deployments as well as multiple public cloud platforms.Such architectures track the intended state of business applications. Any unauthorised and malicious deviation from a legitimate intended state will be dealt with swiftly and automatically, minimising time to detection and time to remediation. The mindset behind the design of such environments is not necessarily focused on keeping the bad actors out, and the assumption is that they are already in! Such architectures continuously refresh and rebuild at element level without any disruption to application and business services, ensuring malware authors never get an opportunity to dwell within the environment long enough to establish command and control.SUMMARYThe reality is that digital transformation, particularly in mature markets, has effectively turned organisations into targets for bad actors. With the rise in use of smart operational technologies, the surface of attack has increased significantly. The majority of the advanced threats that organisations receive are either tailor-made to the targeted organisation or are aimed at specific industry verticals. The consequence of inaction and a relaxed approach to security can lead to the erosion of trust; adverse impact on market perception and confidence; decreased brand value and more critically, issues around long-term business viability.Security needs to be intrinsically built into all systems and processes, up and down the organisation. Adopting a secure from the start approach ensures security is not an afterthought, which can cause friction to business agility. Adopting this strategy will result in technology operating at the speed of business. Security can and should be a catalyst for innovation and has to be built into the fabric of the business, both technologically and culturally.A comprehensive security transformation strategy will deliver operational resiliency, effective risk management and unification of board-level priorities with the overall technology acquisition and deployment strategy. This is what we deliver to our valued customers at Dell Technologies. In order to find out more, please feel free to contact me. Arash Ghazanfari
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