In crises, such as the one we experienced with the coronavirus, technology makes it possible for companies around the world to continue their business with remote access for employees. At the same time, a new challenge is established in the traditional way of information security. In particular, with regard to access controls and monitoring based on technology rather than people.

During the global RSA Conference, held in San Francisco last February, the main theme was the importance of applying policies and processes with people in mind rather than tools. Which makes sense, since the traditional, and often restrictive, approach has proven insufficient. Because it keeps people as the biggest vector of threat.

Today companies apply rules for devices, such as firewall, antivirus, among others. However, if in the home office, a hacker steals data from an employee and manages to enter the company's system with user and password to steal information, probably will not be detected. Because the access is legitimate.

However, when we start monitoring users, we change the information security management landscape. We then move to a predictive and proactive format, and the result is a more realistic way of applying protection measures, not limited to technologies and which can be extended to remote accesses without any additional adaptation. After all, from the moment that the centre of the processes are people, they carry these policies with them, regardless of the means used to access the company's data.

This answers several questions. Including one of the main ones, which is how to validate that the user accessing the environment is not a hacker in disguise. Protection that considers the human factor allows for a behavioural analysis through artificial intelligence. And the rules for this user become restrictive from the moment they detect anomalous behaviour, which is what a hacker would cause during an invasion.

That is why we always work based on human centric, a concept without borders since it works for both on-premises and cloud environments. Today, according to ISH surveys, 24% of all incidents for our clients are caused by people. Our focus is to reduce this statistic. So that people feel more protected and businesses are more productive.

By Dirceu Lippi