Singapore, 3 July 2015 – Frost & Sullivan has just released a White Paper outlining their latest concept for holistic enterprise security, defined by the acronym TRACE – Threat Response Adaptive Core Ecosystem.
As cyber-attacks today become more sophisticated, harder to detect, and are able to bypass traditional security tools, it is a necessity that enterprises today assess their overall security strategy, which should encompass detection, remediation and prevention capabilities in a platform approach rather than viewing them in silos.
“The inspiration behind TRACE was to create a new industry standard for the cyber security community by developing a holistic approach which includes not only security products but also the expertise required to prevent, detect and remediate threats effectively in the enterprise environment,” noted Charles Lim, Senior Industry Analyst, Frost & Sullivan Cyber Security practice lead.
“In addition, we realized that several security components used in enterprises have acronyms tagged to them, such as IAM, NAC, IPS, UTM, NGFW and so on. Similarly, TRACE will be an acronym that encompasses all these aspects in one single platform and represent the dawn of a new security mindset.”
TRACE essentially represents the key components comprising access management, various security solutions towards endpoints, web assets, cloud and mobile applications, content security for email and web, integrated security appliances and advanced threat protection in the network, balanced with human factor mitigation, vulnerability management, and security analytics.
As for its acronym, T.R.A.C.E. stands for:
Threat Response – Need for a holistic approach to react towards threats through prevention, detection and remediation
Adaptive – Allows security tools to gather intelligence and real-time analysis to provide a predictive perspective in the environment, meeting various form factors such as virtual, on premise or used in the cloud
Core Ecosystem – an essential platform enterprises need to adopt, combining human expertise and technological capabilities.
According to Edison Yu, Head, ICT Enterprise division, Frost & Sullivan, Asia Pacific, the constantly evolving nature of the enterprise landscape brings about the possibility of random and stronger threats.
“Enterprises are increasingly finding it a challenge to keep up with the dynamic cyber threat landscape, as threat actors multiply both in terms of numbers as well as the sophistication of attack methods used. This has further heightened the need for C-level executives to have a clear and strategic approach towards their organization’s cyber security setup,” he explained.
End users will be able to use TRACE to identify the potential components they need in the enterprise, using it as a guide to assess their current situation and define the other essential components they need to improve in their ecosystem.
Security vendors also need to consider moving their investments into establishing a more holistic approach to not only strengthen prevention tools, such as penetration testing solutions, but also develop a full detection and remediation strategy for the user. In the different phases of risk management, TRACE aims to provide assessors with insights into the critical features and identify future vulnerabilities to help build and deploy a holistic security strategy to tackle the ever-evolving threat landscape.
Anthony Lim, Senior Advisor, Frost & Sullivan Cyber Security Technology Advisory believes that TRACE will remain relevant moving forward.
“In short, the TRACE is essentially a guide for key IT decision makers that serves to operationalize the critical components of a cyber-security setup for enterprises seeking to prepare themselves for any given threat scenario,” he noted.
The complimentary White Paper can be downloaded here.
