Page 74 - Cyber Defense eMagazine for September 2020

Defending Ever Expanding Networks and IT Systems

Architecture at Scale is Needed

By Trevor Pott, Product Marketing Director, Juniper Networks

How many systems must an information security professional defend? For most people, the numbers
involved are abstract concepts. We think we understand them, but when confronted with them in a
tangible form, we are constantly surprised by how much our perception differs from reality. Today even
the smallest enterprises operate at scales that are simply beyond our ability as humans to truly
comprehend.

There's a considerable gap in capability between small business IT and enterprise IT. For example, it is
entirely feasible – and even reasonable – to meet all of a small organization's file storage needs using a
bare-bones secure cloud storage provider like Sync.

It would be rank madness to do this for an organization with 10,000 employees. When you get to the
scale of a military, there are strong arguments to be made that, if used as the organization's only storage
solution, such an approach would constitute criminal negligence.

Scale matters. As scale increases, inevitably, so does complexity. There is no getting around this.

So how many systems must an information security professional defend? All of them. Given the scale
of our increasingly interconnected world, that's quite the problem.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2020 Edition 74
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