Are you ready for hybrid work? Though the hybrid office will create great opportunities for employees and employers alike, it will create some cybersecurity challenges for security and IT operations. Here, Vishal Jain, Co-Founder and CTO at Valtix, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based provider of cloud native network security services, speaks to Security magazine about the many ways to develop a sustainable cybersecurity program for the new hybrid workforce.

Security: What is your background and current role? 

Jain: I am the co-founder and CTO of Valtix. My background is primarily building products and technology at the intersection of networking, security and cloud; built Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) during early days of Akamai and just finished doing Software Defined Networking (SDN) in a startup which built ACI for Cisco. 

Security: There’s a consensus that for many of us, the reality will be a hybrid workplace. What does the hybrid workforce mean for cybersecurity teams?

Jain: The pandemic has accelerated trends that had already begun before 2019. We’ve just hit an inflection point on the rate of change - taking on much more change in a much shorter period of time. The pandemic is an inflection point for cloud tech adoption. I think about this in three intersections of work, apps, infrastructure, and security:

1. Work and Apps: A major portion of the workforce will continue to work remotely, communicating using collaboration tools like Zoom, WebEx, etc. Post-pandemic, video meetings would be the new norm compared to the old model where in-person meeting was the norm. The defaults have changed. Similarly, the expectation now is that any app is accessible anywhere from any device.
2. Apps and Infrastructure: Default is cloud. This also means that expectation on various infrastructure is now towards speed, agility, being infinite and elastic and being delivered as a service.
3. Infrastructure and Security: This is very important for cybersecurity teams, how do they take a discipline like security from a static environment (traditional enterprise) and apply it to a dynamic environment like cloud.

Security: What solutions will be necessary for enterprise security to implement as we move towards this new work environment?

Jain: In this new work environment where any app is accessible anywhere from any device, enterprise security needs to focus on security of users accessing those apps and security of those apps themselves. User-side security and securing access to the cloud is a well-understood problem now, plenty of innovation and investments have been made here. For security of apps, we need to look back at intersections 2 and 3, mentioned previously.

Enterprises need to understand security disciplines but implementation of these is very different in this new work environment. Security solutions need to evolve to address security & ops challenges. On the security side, definition of visibility has to expand. On the operational side of security, solutions need to be cloud-native, elastic, and infinitely scalable so that enterprises can focus on applications, not the infrastructure. 

Security: What are some of the challenges that will need to be overcome as part of a hybrid workplace?

Jain: Engineering teams typically have experiences working across distributed teams so engineering and the product side of things are not super challenging as part of a hybrid workplace. On the other hand, selling becomes very different, getting both customers and the sales team used to this different world is a challenge enterprises need to focus on. Habits and culture are always the hardest part to change. This is true in security too. There is a tendency to bring in old solutions to secure this new world. Security practitioners could try to bring in the same tech and product he/she has been using for 10 years but deep down they know it’s a bad fit.

Security: How can cloud-based network security help mitigate some of these challenges?

Jain: Cloud-based network security offers an opportunity for enterprises to focus on applications, not the security infrastructure. Using cloud-native network security delivered as a service, enterprises can stop managing individual boxes or appliances in the cloud but instead focus on defining security policies that aid the business. Cloud-based network security solutions also offer deep visibility for the customer's cloud environments that enables enterprises to see changes in their cloud environment and enact solutions that adapt to changes.