Cyber security today is no longer about defending a perimeter. It’s about building an integrated, adaptive framework that protects your business in a world where users, devices, data, and workloads are constantly in motion.
At Data#3, we anchor our approach to cyber security around four core pillars:
These pillars are not standalone silos—they are interdependent capabilities that, when brought together, provide the layered resilience modern enterprises require.
What ties them together? The network. More than just infrastructure, the network is the connective tissue across every domain—cloud, users, data centres, and applications. It provides the visibility and control to make security decisions in real time, and it’s where we have built our deepest capabilities.
At the core of our approach is a simple but powerful model:
Individually, each pillar addresses a critical area of risk, but it’s the way they intersect that creates a truly resilient cyber security strategy.
Zero Trust is a principle, not a product—and one that’s often misunderstood. At its core, Zero Trust means no implicit trust is given to any user, device, or application, regardless of whether they’re inside or outside the network. Every access attempt must be continuously validated.
Implementing Zero Trust effectively demands identity-driven controls, strong authentication, and real time visibility into who is connecting to what, from where, and under what conditions. That visibility? It comes from the network.
The network is more than just cables and switches—it’s the platform that connects users, data, cloud, and infrastructure. If it’s not secure, nothing else is.
A secure network allows us to enforce segmentation, monitor traffic flows, and apply policies based on user roles and device types across a hybrid environment. It also provides the context we need for threat detection, access control, and incident response. At Data#3 this is where we excel. Our team’s deep expertise in micro-segmentation and intent-based networking using solutions like Cisco’s Identity Services Engine (ISE), play a pivotal role, enabling policy-based networking, where access is based on user role and device posture, aligned with business intent.
Modern threats don’t stay in one place. Attackers move laterally, jumping from endpoint to cloud workload to email system. That’s why observability is critical to detection and response.
Observability provides deep visibility across your entire environment—networks, applications, endpoints, and identities. It collects rich telemetry and uses AI/ML to uncover suspicious lateral movement or unexpected port scans, that traditional monitoring might miss.
When paired with micro-segmentation, observability not only detects threats but also validates whether segmentation policies are working as intended. It adds context, accuracy and a faster response.
This layered, adaptive defence is vital for spotting and combatting advanced threats early.
Security tools alone don’t stop breaches; people and processes matter just as much. Security Operations is the pillar that brings together insights from across the environment, enabling real-time decision-making and incident response.
A strong Security Operations function is built on three things: visibility, automation, and integration. Security Operations Centre (SOC) teams need to see what’s happening, automate repetitive tasks, and act quickly across systems. When network, observability data, and access controls are integrated, SOC teams can detect threats faster and respond more effectively.
These four pillars work in concert. Zero Trust cannot succeed without a secure network to enforce policies. The ability to detect anomalies and threats is reliant on comprehensive visibility into network traffic, application behaviour, and security events. Security Operations relies on inputs from all three to prioritise and act on threats. The tighter the integration between these pillars, the stronger the overall security posture.
While each pillar is essential, the network underpins them all. At Data#3, we often say that securing the network is the most critical first step . Without a trustworthy foundation, the rest of your security strategy will falter.
The network provides context: who is accessing what, from where, and how. It enables segmentation, ensuring that if a breach occurs, the impact is contained. Critically, it allows for consistent policy enforcement across hybrid environments. Whether traffic is flowing from a remote user to a SaaS app, or between containers in a cloud environment, security needs to travel with it.
We see the network as more than just connectivity—it’s a strategic control point. That’s why we’ve invested so heavily in technologies from Cisco such as Software-Defined Access (SD-Access), Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), and Identity Services Engine (ISE). These tools give our customers the ability to understand what’s inside network traffic, automate policy enforcement, segment and dynamically assign policies based on users and devices.
ISE provides the intelligence and identity context that enables SD-Access to define and enforce access policies based on who the user is and what they are using, rather than static parameters like IP addresses or physical location. That’s a massive shift in how networks are secured—it means policy follows the user, enabling consistent security no matter where or how they connect.
The result is unprecedented visibility and control. Security and network teams can see how devices and users move through the environment, what they access, where they connect, and where it should be restricted. This visibility is essential to enforcing Zero Trust principles and effective detection and response.
In an intent-based network, the goal is simple: make the network understand what the business wants to achieve, and then automatically enforce those goals. In Cisco environments, SD-Access works in tandem with Cisco ISE to deliver smarter operations and stronger security.
At Data#3, we’ve worked with a wide range of customers to implement these principles in real environments. One recent engagement involved a large enterprise looking to modernise its security posture following several near-miss incidents. Their challenge was typical: fragmented tools, limited visibility, and inconsistent policy enforcement across cloud and on-premises infrastructure.
We began by reviewing the network architecture and implementing segmentation via Cisco SD-Access, which reduced the blast radius for lateral movement. We then worked with their identity team to enforce Zero Trust principles using Cisco ISE, which provided centralised access control and secure network segmentation. Cisco Duo was integrated for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and identity intelligence, ensuring secure, contextual access. Finally, we deployed Cisco Extended Detection Response (XDR) to bring together telemetry from firewalls, endpoints, and email into a unified view and connected these feeds into their SOC workflows.
The result wasn’t just better protection—it was operational simplicity. Security teams gained the visibility to act decisively, while network teams had confidence in consistent, automated policy enforcement.
Many organisations understand the need for a stronger cyber security posture, but few know how to get there in a structured, scalable way. That’s why this four-pillar model works, but recognising the model is only step one. The challenge lies in execution.
A typical starting point for customers is to look at what new technology to buy. However, the first step should be gaining visibility into what’s already happening across the environment.
That means understanding:
You can’t secure what you can’t see – visibility is the foundation that enables every other pillar. In our experience, it’s also the thing most often overlooked.
Where customers struggle: Many rely on fragmented tools and point products that provide insight into only one domain (e.g. endpoint, email, network) without a way to correlate or act on that information. This limits threat detection, delays response, and creates blind spots for attackers to exploit.
Before implementing complex detection platforms or advanced analytics, organisations need to secure the connective tissue of their environment—the network. This means putting segmentation in place, enforcing policy through identity, and eliminating excessive access pathways.
This is where Cisco SD-Access and intent-based networking become important; they let security policies follow users and devices, not just IP addresses.
Where customers struggle: Many organisations still run flat networks. Segmentation is either too coarse or non-existent. Policy enforcement is done manually, making it error-prone and inconsistent. Without a secure network, Zero Trust and XDR solutions are significantly less effective.
Zero Trust is impossible without strong identity foundations. Organisations need to adopt MFA, enforce conditional access policies, and tie identity directly into network and application access decisions.
This means enabling dynamic policy enforcement based on user identity, device health, and contextual factors such as location and time.
Where customers struggle: Identity systems are often disconnected from the network. MFA is deployed only on a few critical systems, and access is granted broadly to avoid friction. These gaps create unnecessary risk and are among the first things attacker’s target.
With identity and network controls in place, the focus can shift to detection—where the real value of a mature security architecture begins to emerge. This is where observability becomes critical. Rather than just collecting logs or alerts, observability means gaining deep, real-time insight into what’s happening across every layer of your environment.
XDR platforms enable this by integrating signals from endpoints, network traffic, cloud workloads, email, and identity systems into a single correlated view. Unlike traditional tools that only see part of the picture, XDR delivers context-rich detections that help teams prioritise and act faster.
However, implementing XDR isn’t just about choosing a product. It’s about integrating existing tools, establishing workflows, and tuning detection logic based on the organisation’s risk profile.
A natural progression from XDR is the integration of Security and Information Event Management (SIEM) and Security, Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) capabilities, which enable long-term visibility, compliance reporting, and automation of response workflows. Together, they provide a foundation for proactive threat hunting and faster incident containment.
Where customers struggle: Many teams operate in silos. Endpoint teams don’t talk to network teams, and alerts are handled manually without correlation or context. This means there’s no central place to investigate threats, and response actions aren’t automated.
As technologies evolve, so too will the four pillars of security. AI-driven analytics are already transforming how threats are detected and prioritised. The role of the network will only become more critical; it’s where data flows, where threats travel, and where real time security decisions can be enforced.
At Data#3, this isn’t new ground—it’s home turf. A long-standing Gold Partner with Cisco, we’ve built our reputation on helping organisations across Australia build robust, scalable networks. Today our security teams work closely with our Cisco networking experts to help customers build secure networks by design.
The Data#3 Security Resilient Assessment developed in partnership with Cisco is the perfect next step for evaluating your organisation’s security maturity. This half-day workshop delivers actionable insights to identify and address security gaps and provide a roadmap to enhance business continuity and compliance. For more details contact your account manager or register your details below:
Information provided within this form will be handled in accordance with our privacy statement.