Cisco says PHL companies shifting to modern cybersecurity technologies

SOME 35% of cyber technologies used by Philippine companies are outdated, Cisco Systems, Inc. said, but most are already starting to modernize their approaches by investing in “zero-trust” strategy and secure access service edge architectures.

More than half or 52% of the respondents from the Philippines consider their cybersecurity infrastructure complex, Cisco said in an e-mailed statement on Sunday, citing its latest study, the Security Outcomes Study Volume 2.

Cisco polled over 5,000 security and privacy professionals in 27 markets around the world, including more than 2,000 professionals from 13 markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Organizations are facing multiple challenges while operating in this environment, including complexity in connecting users to applications and data across multiple cloud platforms, inconsistent security policies across disparate locations and networks, difficulty in verifying identity of users and devices, lack of end-to-end visibility of their security infrastructure, etc.,” the company said.

Many companies in the Philippines are now addressing the problem by investing in modern cybersecurity technologies and approaches.

“Ninety percent of respondents in the Philippines said their company is investing in ‘zero-trust’ strategy, with 51% saying their organizations are making steady progress with adopting it and 39% saying they are at a mature state of implementing it,” Cisco said.

Moreover, 87% of the respondents from the Philippines indicated that their companies are investing in secure access service edge architecture, or SASE, with 46% saying they are making good progress toward adopting it and 41% saying their implementation is at mature levels.

Cisco defines SASE as an architecture that combines networking and security functions in the cloud to enable secure access to applications wherever users work, and zero trust as a security strategy that involves verifying the identity of each user or device that connects to an organization’s network to mitigate security risks.

Organizations that have mature implementations of the zero-trust strategy or SASE architectures are seen to have more robust security operations than those with nascent implementations.

“These two approaches are key to building a strong security posture for companies in the modern cloud-first and application-centric world,” the company said. — Arjay L. Balinbin