Zero Trust, AI and the Hyperscale Cloud: Microsoft Malaysia's Dzaharudin Mansor on Modern Cybersecurity

Defences built for an earlier era do not hold up against today's attackers, in the same way that a medieval suit of armour would be useless against bullets. Dr Dzaharudin Mansor, National Technology Officer (NTO) for Microsoft Malaysia, argues that a modern approach to cybersecurity means adjusting protection to the needs of a digital world and applying the new technologies and methods now available.

Many factors go into protecting an organisation from current threats. Dzaharudin picks out three that he considers most critical and capable of greatly improving any organisation's security posture: adopting a zero-trust security model, applying Artificial Intelligence (AI), and making use of cloud technology.

Trust nobody, verify everything

In Dzaharudin's view, zero trust is now a core part of modern security. Hybrid working has exposed weaknesses in older security models, so businesses can no longer assume anyone is trustworthy. The model rests on the principle that an organisation should trust nothing and nobody, whether inside or outside it. Verification and access control are what matter. Not every employee can or should reach a company's most sensitive data, which makes monitoring that access essential. He adds that AI should support a zero-trust rollout by assessing access and identities in real time.

AI to cope with the volume of threats

AI has made its mark in many parts of business, and its effect on cybersecurity is especially deep, Dzaharudin says. Security teams are swamped by how many threats they face, how varied those threats are and how sophisticated they have become. AI can now automate and strengthen the protection, detection and response to them. It can, for example, watch activity inside systems, assess the risk and apply the relevant policies on its own, allowing a zero-trust model to be put into practice automatically.

What the hyperscale cloud makes affordable

Technologies such as AI were once too costly or too far out of reach for most organisations. Cloud computing, he argues, has put the most powerful tools within reach of any business, giving it a realistic chance against the constant stream of attacks.

AI solutions running in the hyperscale cloud now support endpoint security, Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration Automation Response (SOAR), which together put the protect, detect and respond approach into practice. Because people are unlikely to find threats hidden in enormous volumes of data, he says a technological answer in the form of AI is needed.

SIEM served organisations well for analysing and mitigating threats in the past, but the growth in the number of threat actors and their tactics means it has had to evolve. SIEM tools with AI built in are no longer just searchable, role-based log engines; they analyse an organisation's IT environment automatically and continuously. With AI and machine learning delivered through the cloud, a company's SOC receives results that help it judge and manage the security of the business's systems and data more effectively.

SOAR, as its name suggests, links security orchestration, automation and response. Using AI-based tools, organisations can speed up incident response so that threats are removed promptly.

The hyperscale cloud has also made micro-segmentation of data affordable. If one segment is attacked, data in the others stays unaffected, which saves the time, money and effort that recovering from an attack across the whole business would demand. As hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure becomes common and inexpensive, companies can also rely on backups and other fail-safes if their systems are compromised.

Dzaharudin stresses that the hyperscale cloud, by making AI for security and micro-segmentation possible, is only one part of the answer. To defend against the range and sophistication of current threats, he says, organisations need a security approach that is holistic and multi-layered, pairing modern technology with a forward-looking strategy.

About Dr Dzaharudin Mansor

Dr Dzaharudin Mansor is National Technology Officer for Microsoft Malaysia and has more than 33 years of professional experience in ICT. He works with key national technology stakeholders, including academics and policymakers, to contribute to the country's development, and holds advisory positions at several universities.