How can organisations investing in Blockchain solutions prepare their security team for the impact of the technology?
By Andrew Potgieter, Director Security Solutions at Westcon-Comstor
Although Blockchain technology has great promise, the technology today is still in infancy and very immature.
The technology tends to be offered as a solution in search of a problem and as such, business and IT tend to experiment extensively.
A focus must be made on the business need and from this stand point an understanding of the required security of information as one would when data is no longer held behind lock and key, as we see in the cloud migration and digital transformation models.
According to Gartner, CIOs are still struggling and under pressure to guide decisions on if and how they should implement Blockchain but struggle with how to apply this technology to meet new business challenges.
According to David Furlonger, Vice President and Gartner Fellow: “The relevance is in the underlying infrastructure or leverage technology. And once we’ve got a handle on that, if we approach it practically or pragmatically, I think we’ll be able to dispel a lot of the hype that’s in the market right now.”
Some of the leading Next Generation Firewall and End Point Vendors are already addressing the possible, current and future threats that malicious entities are using to enhance, host and deliver new cyberthreats using Blockchain and Ethereum based platforms. As a CTO, CIO or CISO, it is important to be in an ongoing conversation with your multiple technology vendors or Managed Security Service Providers to understand their strategy and deliverables in any emerging technology area, and from a MSSP perspective are the embedded platforms that are used compliant and addressing these areas.
As with all new technologies, there is more complexity and specialisation, which makes it more difficult for a business to be able to address these new threat vectors, comprehensively, timeously and cost effectively. This is where the role of the MSSP is becoming more vital as they focus and specialise and have a greater visibility and understanding across multiple customer environments and use this shared broader experience to the benefit of each individual customer.
