Protecting GenMobile: the need for adaptive trust in cybersecurity

For better or worse we are all dependant on our mobile devices these days. This is especially true for the youngest in our workforce. This cohort of employees ranging from 18-35 years of age are what Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has coined GenMobile.

They’ve been called Millennials, Gen Y, Generation Next, but their brand isn’t as important as their behaviour, because it’s their behaviour that’s reshaping the workplace, and by 2025 this group will make up 75% of the Australian workforce¹.

GenMobile aren’t simply using their devices for occasional messaging, browsing or shopping – they base much of their lives around their mobile devices, and that goes for their work life as well. To offer GenMobile the digital workplace experiences they expect, your organisation needs the ability to deliver cloud-native applications to any device, in any location, while also guaranteeing a seamless end-to-end experience.

Unfortunately, as data and applications move out from controlled, protected corporate environments, cybersecurity risks are rising rapidly. According to research from the Ponemon Institute, which surveyed more than 3,800 IT security leaders, the expanding and blurring of the IT, perimeter is causing an IT security gap.

• 55% of IT security leaders say it is increasingly difficult to protect the IT perimeter because of the growth in BYOD, mobile and cloud.
• 49% reported they lack visibility into what users are doing while connected to their IT infrastructure².

Real-time context is essential

Information that drives your organisation forward lives everywhere. GenMobile doesn’t wait for permission to access and share resources they need. Security must extend to the ever-expanding mix of apps and devices that empower your business.

To protect GenMobile you need to adapt your security to the way this new generation works. The focus is shifted from the perimeter to focusing on the context, such as the user and the user’s app and devices.

This requires you to create an evolving map of user behaviour and context in relation to their requirements from your IT environment. This new approach of trust that is weighed and adapted to contextual factors is what Aruba calls Adaptive Trust. At a high level, this approach involves:

• establishing policies that differentiate access by roles, devices, time of day and locations,
• using these policies to deny, allow or prioritise access to your data assets based on predefined rules that can be adapted over time,
• rules that can be designed around your compliance programs to ensure compliance before, during and after access, and
• leveraging contextual data from other components in the infrastructure.

Aruba ClearPass is the brain behind the Aruba Adaptive Trust approach.

Aruba ClearPass

Aruba ClearPass is a centralised policy management platform that does the heavy lifting for securing your IT infrastructure. ClearPass removes the burden of onboarding new devices away from your IT team without sacrificing security or policy enforcement. It delivers device identity, policy control, workflow automation and automated threat protect from a single cohesive solution. By capturing and correlating real-time contextual data, ClearPass enables you to define policies that work in any environment. Its key features include:

• Role-based network access – network access policy enforcement for multi-vendor network infrastructure.
• Onboarding – automated workflows for BYOD provisioning and a more secure user experience.
• Secure guest access – automated workflows for guest access without manual administration.
• Device health – continuous checking of device posture to maintain a clean network environment.
• Third party integration – communication with other security point solutions such as MDM or firewalls to provide an end-to-end security EcoSystem

ClearPass also handles emerging network security challenges surrounding the adoption of IoT, whilst providing stronger mobile device and app authentication, and deeper visibility into security incidents. Automated threat protection and intelligent service features ensure that each device is accurately given network access privileges with minimal hands-on IT interaction.

If you’re looking to harness the full potential of GenMobile, while keeping your network and data secure, get in touch with us today to find out how we can build Adaptive Trust into your security through Aruba’s world-leading network architecture.

1. Kronos (January 2016). Motivating Millennials Report. [Online] Available at: https://www.kronos.com.au/resources/motivating-millennials-report?fs=200&at=g
2. Ponemon Institute (2018). Closing the IT Security Gap with Automation & AI in the Era of IoT. [online] Available at: https://connect.arubanetworks.com/ponemonsecurityreport