For years, the mantra of cybersecurity echoed the “perimeter.” Firewalls stood tall like digital Hadrian’s Walls, antivirus software patrolled the gates, and email filters acted as vigilant sentries. This approach focused on keeping the “bad guys” out and offered a tangible sense of security. We could see the defenses, watch them in action, and feel a semblance of control.

But modern 21st-century attacks don’t work that way. Hackers have taken these front door locks into account and learned to climb through the windows. As it turns out, these “windows” offer much easier access anyway.

But the digital landscape continues to change. The perimeter, once a seemingly solid boundary, is now porous, fragmented, and increasingly irrelevant. Everything became so interconnected that the boundaries dissolved. Cloud computing, remote workforces, outsourcing, and system integrations blurred the lines until they no longer exist. Relying solely on perimeter defenses today is akin to guarding a treasure chest with a locked front door while all the windows are wide open.

With 90% of companies reporting an attack at least once in the last year, the waves are constantly beating at our sandcastle. And with almost 40% breached – the water is already pouring in.

The Cold, Hard Logic: Why Perimeter Security Fails Your Data

Let’s be brutally honest. Data breaches are no longer a matter of if, but when. The headlines scream this truth with alarming regularity. Sophisticated attackers routinely bypass even the most robust and expensive perimeters. They breach the largest and most secure organizations on the planet. They do it through:

• Social Engineering: The human element remains the weakest link. Clever phishing attacks and social manipulation tactics can trick even the most vigilant employees. Once inside, behind the perimeter, attackers have free rein.
• Insider Threats: Disgruntled employees, greedy users, or pure malice within your organization represent a significant and often overlooked risk. Over 20% of data breaches are by internal actors and the perimeter offers zero protection against them.
• Zero-Day Exploits: These previously unknown vulnerabilities in software can be exploited before patches are even available. Perimeter defenses, focused on known threats, are powerless against these novel attacks.
• Supply Chain Attacks: Increasingly, attackers are targeting less secure third-party vendors to gain access to their primary targets. Your strong perimeter becomes irrelevant if a partner with access has been compromised.
• Misconfigurations: Human error is inevitable. A misconfigured firewall rule or an overly permissive access control can inadvertently create gaping holes in your defenses, rendering your investment useless.
• Insecure Devices: Remote work and BYOD means many devices you have no control over and are on your network. Anyone with access to an employee’s home computer is directly plugged into your internal network.

Thinking your perimeter will hold against these multifaceted threats is not just optimistic, it’s dangerously naive. It’s like believing a moat will stop a determined enemy with wings.

The Path to True Security

Embracing Data-Centricity and Defense in Depth

We know perimeter security is not airtight. We see organizations breached every week. We realize a data breach is coming and it is just a matter of time. But we still rely on the perimeter and invest heavily in it.

The illusion created by perimeter security gives us a false sense of comfort. However, true security lies not in building higher walls but in protecting the crown jewels – your data. That requires a paradigm shift towards data-centric security and a defense-in-depth strategy.

Preliminary steps: These are fundamental steps to establish a minimal base for your security. They will not stop any modern attack but offer a good foundation to start building on.

• Know Your Data: Locate where your sensitive data resides, who has access to it, and how they use it. This fundamental visibility is the first step towards effective protection. You cannot protect data that you don’t know where it is or who is touching it. Start with the databases and then work your way outwards. Core Audit can help you gain this visibility in both your databases and your applications.
• Lockdown Access: From password policies to least privileged, you must ensure users are properly authenticated and only authorized to access data necessary to perform their duties. These are fundamental steps in security but are insufficient and cannot hold back attackers. You must do more.
• Encryption: Encrypt data in transit and at rest. That is standard security nowadays, built into every technology stack and easily enabled. While vital, this will not stop most attacks either.

Activity Control: The underlying challenge in data-centric security is to inspect and protect all the activity that accesses the data. When inspecting everything (and there are billions of activities), you mostly see a lot of legitimate activity. You must isolate the few potentially illegitimate activities inside it. That is where anomaly analysis, proactive forensics, and advanced activity prevention come in. That is why solutions like Core Audit and Core Masking are indispensable. Activity Control is also required by all compliance requirements, acknowledging its vital importance.

• Database Security: Moving beyond minimal essentials, you must employ activity monitoring, anomaly analysis, proactive forensics, and advanced activity prevention. These are specialized technologies designed to secure your specific database system. Without these types of defenses, you won’t be able to stop any current attack. Core Audit is an essential solution in this task offering the most advanced protection for your databases.
• Application Security: Following the data from the database to the application, employ activity monitoring, anomaly analysis, and proactive forensics at the application level. These are variations of the specialized database technologies. However, we designed these to lock down your application. These are complementary to WAF but superior since they look inside the application, not just outside. Core Audit supports Java applications and Web Client Security to complement the database security measures and keep your data safe.
• Data Masking: You must mask data outside of production systems. While there are other ways to defend it, data masking is, by far, the easiest and most cost-effective solution. The challenge is to ensure the masked data is valuable for the testing, development, or other purposes it is meant for. Otherwise, eliminating the sensitive information is pointless. This is where the capabilities of Core Masking become indispensable offering a wide array of algorithms that fit every purpose.

The Human Element: Solutions need people to operate them. Without people who understand the technologies, know what to look for, and how to respond, you will not achieve security. It is the people that will make your security work.

• Train Your Security People: Shifting from traditional perimeter security to data-centric requires additional skills. People need to know what a SQL injection looks like and how to react to alerts of suspicious activity. There is a maturity process in organizations as they move from cleaning viruses and spam emails to combating modern threats. It requires the right solutions, training, gaining experience, and ingraining it into your security DNA.
• Train Your Database and Application Administrators: Data-centric security can be highly technical and require you to rely on domain-level expertise that is already in your organization. Getting administrators on board will not only cement the technical back you may need but also bake security into the entire IT stack.

Final Thoughts

Moving beyond the outdated perimeter-centric mindset is inevitable. It is just a matter of time. However, it requires the courage and willingness to embrace a more modern and comprehensive approach. More than that, it requires acknowledging that the walls will fail and that you must shift your focus to safeguarding what truly matters: your data.

Start by protecting your database. That’s an important first step and it will help you embrace this tectonic shift in mindset: thinking about your data. Even if, right now, you don’t know what it is, where it is, who is using it, or how. That is the beginning of this new journey.

Do not let the illusion of the wall lull you into a false sense of security. The cost of inaction is far greater than the investment in robust data-centric security. It is time to leave the sandcastle and build a true data fortress from the inside out. Your business, your customers, and your peace of mind depend on it.

Data-centric security and activity controls are the future of security. It is, for example, the only way to protect the cloud since the cloud has no perimeter. However, with or without perimeter, data-centric is the only effective method to secure data. Let us help you gain control of your data. Contact us today!