Addressing technical debt
Consolidating risk management through seamless integrations
Safeguarding organizations from today’s cyber threats has never been more complex. Attack surfaces are expanding, adversaries are becoming more intelligent, and IT and security teams are struggling to manage the large number of solutions they have adopted over the years. Some organizations are finding success reducing this management complexity and closing the gaps created by multiple, disparate tools by applying a holistic approach to security.
Adapt to a new way of implementing cyber security
To keep pace with a rapidly evolving threat landscape, many IT and security leaders have accumulated numerous individual tools from a variety of distinct technology vendors. This approach leaves IT and security teams forced to manage a fragmented array of solutions, each addressing a specific need within the security stack. In a recent survey of cyber security professionals, respondents from large organizations reported using more than 20 security solutions. This accumulation of solutions leads to redundancies, integration challenges, and alert fatigue — hindering an organization’s ability to assess, prioritize, and mitigate threats.
To address these challenges, Gartner recommends embracing a well-integrated platform. This approach focuses on adopting the fewest number of solutions needed to effectively observe, protect against, and respond to threats. By leveraging a set of well-integrated tools, businesses can eliminate silos that impede cyber defenses and lead to an ineffective risk posture.
Enhance protection and improve incident response
By taking advantage of key partnerships among technology vendors, organizations can reduce risk and simplify the tool stack. For example, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, and Accenture have teamed up to provide industry-leading security capabilities with managed security services and automated tools. This partnership provides organizations with trusted defenses to combat emerging cyber threats and minimize management complexity. It offers a deeply connected and integrated approach that improves visibility and unifies defenses.
Key security capabilities — including secure access service edge (SASE), security service edge (SSE), web application and API protection (WAAP), security information and event management (SIEM), extended detection and response (XDR), and endpoint detection and response (EDR) — help teams seamlessly exchange real-time risk signals between systems. This integration helps streamline detection efforts while dynamically enforcing consistent security controls across users, devices, networks, and apps.
Managed security services specialists can oversee solution integration, providing proactive threat prevention, incident response, and operational support on top of the security tools. The combined solutions and support help unify security tooling — removing administration and management burden for IT and security teams.
Three strategic outcomes of technology integrations
Together, through this partnership between Cloudflare, Accenture, and CrowdStrike, organizations can achieve better visibility and log accuracy, enhance and enforce Zero Trust, and accelerate incident response:
Improve visibility and log accuracy: Organizations gain a multi-layered approach to threat detection that’s managed by expert analysts. Cloudflare secures web traffic, networks, applications, and APIs by blocking attacks, while XDR capabilities continuously scan user devices for infections or malicious behavior. All security logs are seamlessly integrated, stored, and correlated within the SIEM, providing analysts with centralized, real-time, and precise visibility into security events as they happen.
Enhance and enforce Zero Trust: Capitalizing on the technology partnership also enables organizations to enforce stringent user and device postures across the network. The managed services team collaborates with organizations to understand their security requirements, risk profiles, and existing environments. Organizations can then implement Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) capabilities and use CrowdStrike Zero Trust Assessment (ZTA) scores to establish parameters and access thresholds that safeguard against threats. When devices or users exceed these established risk limits, requests are automatically denied. Organizations can automatically apply restrictive controls to lock down access and prevent unauthorized traffic. As a result, organizations can improve Zero Trust and edge network modernization strategies while leveraging accelerators and security best practices.
Accelerate incident response: In the technology partnership between Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, and Accenture, the vendors exchange activity data and enforce risk-based policies and remediation steps. For example, high-fidelity alerts in CrowdStrike’s next-gen SIEM provide Accenture analysts with clear risk indicators to review across the Cloudflare connectivity cloud and CrowdStrike platforms. Machine learning models surface the top threats, helping analysts prioritize risks for investigation while proposing recommended solutions to combat active attacks. Analysts can also build and enforce automated mitigation enriched with CrowdStrike and Cloudflare data and telemetry.
Streamline your security stack today
Robust technology partnerships — such as the partnership among Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, and Accenture — can help unify defenses and reduce complexity across the industry. Through an integrated approach offered through this partnership, organizations can strengthen security posture, accelerate incident response, and reduce security tool sprawl — while removing the burden for IT and security teams.
This article is part of a series on the latest trends and topics impacting today’s technology decision-makers.
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Learn more about how unifying defenses can reduce complexity in the Unify risk posture with Cloudflare and partners brief.
Authors
Deepak Mathur
Global Zero Trust Leader, Accenture
Erika McKernan
Sr. Director of Technology Alliances, CrowdStrike
Mike Schrock — @schrock
Principal Global Alliances Manager, Cloudflare
John Oudewaal — @johnoudewaal
Principal Global Director, GSI, Cloudflare
Key takeaways
After reading this article you will be able to understand:
How technology partnerships can benefit organizations by unifying risk protection
Why tool and vendor integration is key for simplifying management and improving security
Which underlying technologies and managed service offerings can provide the greatest impact