Transforming enterprise cybersecurity infrastructure, processes and programs is a critical initiative for businesses of all sizes. Accelerating business growth will rely on evaluating the efficacy, efficiency and performance, as well as the ongoing investments of the cybersecurity estate.

The increasing frequency and sophistication of cyber threats, as well as the mounting complexity of the cybersecurity estate for most organizations, has created an opportunity to modernize cybersecurity within every aspect of digital operations. According to a recent report by Palo Alto Networks, 96% of 1,300 global cybersecurity executives surveyed said that they experienced at least one breach or incident in the past year. Within the same report, 77% of security executives believed that reducing the number of security solutions and services they use will be critical to improving cyber efficacy, efficiency and investments. Cyber transformation initiatives will be essential to more effectively mitigate risks, improve resiliency, maximize investments and maintain trust with employees, partners and customers in the digital landscape.

The Palo Alto Networks and HCLTech partnership was established to address the evolving enterprise cybersecurity landscape and provide our mutual clients with integrated, intelligent security solutions that help organizations achieve their cybersecurity transformation goals. The partnership enhances client security posture and readiness, simplifies security operations and enables proactive identification and mitigation of cybersecurity risks.

What is cyber transformation?

The fundamental concept behind cyber transformation is to ensure that the cybersecurity strategy is built into and aligned with every aspect of the business to accelerate digital transformation. This holistic approach requires rationalizing an organization's current security technologies, providers, structure and infrastructure against key priorities within an organization.

Key priorities

1. Accommodate the needs of a growing hybrid workforce
2. Manage customer expansion strategies that increase data access requirements
3. Integrate a diverse partner ecosystem that introduces new access points and devices on the network and expands the enterprise attack surface
4. Exercise control over multicloud environments with the growing pace of cloud migration and application modernization projects
5. Govern the growing use of automation-driven solutions, incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies
6. Meet staffing requirements given a scarcity of qualified applicants
7. Address mounting compliance and regulatory requirements

Cyber transformation will play a critical role in enabling an organization to address key business priorities without compromising performance, efficacy or capabilities. This will require an increased shift from a reactive to a proactive and strategic cybersecurity approach.

Key trends driving cyber transformation

Network security

As organizations accelerate digital transformation, they are experiencing challenges with their traditional networks and network security architecture. Organizations struggle to deliver consistent security and optimized experiences for increasingly cloud-delivered apps and services across a growing hybrid or remote workforce with legacy networking and security infrastructures. Traditional hub-and-spoke architectures that backhaul traffic to centralized data centers for security policy enforcement and inspection don't scale and result in poor user experiences. Moreover, inconsistent policies, varying user access locations and device preferences present additional security gaps.

Converging networking and security in the cloud around a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) addresses these challenges. SASE is the convergence of wide-area networking and network security services that include FWaaS, SWG, CASB and ZTNA technologies into a single, cloud-delivered service model. An effective SASE solution must converge SD-WAN and security into a single, integrated offering that delivers consistent protection with a high-performance experience for all users, regardless of location.

Cloud security

Applications are predominantly being deployed across multicloud and hybrid-cloud environments. In The State of Cloud Native Security report from Palo Alto Networks, 69% of organizations in 2022 host more than half of their workloads in the cloud.

Whether reallocating server workloads from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud or modernizing applications via cloud-native application architectures, organizations can't rely solely on the cloud service provider for the security of their cloud infrastructure. Security risks and vulnerabilities are residents at every stage of the code-to-cloud journey (Code & Build, Deploy and Run). As applications are deployed across multicloud and hybrid-cloud environments, the level of complexity and risk grows. A single misconfiguration in the build stage can result in many vulnerable deployments, which leads to compromises (worst case) or an overwhelming number of alerts (best case) at runtime. Overly permissive access to applications, workloads and APIs can lead to the compromise of cloud services and cloud accounts. Confidential, sensitive or protected data at rest and in-flight may be subject to data exfiltration by individuals inside and outside an organization.

Many organizations evaluate the sprawl of cloud security tools being leveraged, given the rapid acceleration of multicloud and hybrid-cloud environments, and leverage a standards-based cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) as a comprehensive cloud-native security platform.

Navigate the evolving cyber landscape with HCLTech and Palo Alto Networks, your partners in cyber transformation excellence.

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SOC operations

Given the burnout rates and shortage of security analysts, organizations are increasingly looking to modernize their security operations centers (SOCs). The typical SOC operates on data silos, fragmented tools, limited cloud visibility, aging security information and event management (SIEM) technology and manual SOC analyst-driven processes. The growing volume and complexity of threats make traditional methods of detection and response insufficient, pushing organizations to transform their cybersecurity landscapes and adopt automated tools and AIOps for rapid and accurate threat management.

SOC transformation drives the need to improve detection, response, analyst experience and continuous risk reduction. The use of advanced machine learning to build an intelligent data foundation is needed to enhance automated detection in real-time, apply AI-driven response measures, improve operational efficiency and combat the cybersecurity skills shortage challenge. According to a recent report by Palo Alto Networks, the SOC is ground zero for the effective deployment of AI/ML technologies, with an automation-first SOC leading to more effective threat detection and security outcomes.

Consolidation with best-of-breed platforms

The fragmented approach to cybersecurity, with numerous point solutions and tools, cannot keep up with the pace of change in cybersecurity. Attempting to coordinate different systems can delay detection, response and remediation times, putting a strain on cybersecurity personnel and infrastructure.

Palo Alto Networks provides a leading unified platform approach to network security, cloud security and SOC operations, along with the transformative services from HCLTech, providing organizations with the necessary strategy, consulting and solutions to confidently focus on securely growing their business.

Adapting to cybersecurity trends

Organizations should adopt a strategically phased approach to cyber transformation by following these primary recommendations:

1. Prioritize efforts based on risk and improve security risk profiles
2. Invest in up-leveling cybersecurity skills across teams
3. Foster a collaborative and continuous learning culture for cybersecurity
4. Partner with cyber transformation experts

Partnering with Palo Alto Networks, HCLTech provides enterprises with expert strategy, consulting and cyber transformation services. This allows enterprises to focus on business imperatives with improved confidence, timeliness and assurance.

Initiating the cyber transformation journey —where to start and why?

A cyber transformation journey varies for every organization, yet it often starts with a comprehensive security risk assessment. This step helps identify vulnerabilities, assess exposure to threat vectors and evaluate overall cybersecurity resilience. It involves examining the current security infrastructure, policies, procedures, regulatory compliance status and the potential impact of a breach. A comprehensive assessment enables an organization to make informed decisions, stay ahead of evolving threats, future-proof new technologies and primarily mobilize a plan to enhance its security posture.

The future of cyber transformation with HCLTech and Palo Alto Networks

HCLTech and Palo Alto Networks are investing in advanced solutions to prepare for the future of cyber transformation. These solutions incorporate AI and machine learning, enhance solution integration, support evolving client business needs and focus on comprehensive organizational cybersecurity education and awareness.

1. HCLTech Cyber Defence Service for Cloud powered by Palo Alto Networks: An end-to-end security service combined with Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud, utilizing the cloud security posture management (CSPM) and cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) capabilities of Prisma Cloud.
2. HCLTech Managed SASE as a Service powered by Palo Alto Networks: Consulting-led security strategy services to foster SASE adoption, incorporating ZTNA 2.0 principles with managed services post-deployment, enabled by Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE.
3. HCLTech Incident Response Retainer and Proactive Services: Effective and quick incident response on a 24/7 basis will make the customers feel secure and show that we are ever ready for incident response. Another feature is the containment of the breach and its investigation, especially in case it happens while utilizing a Unit42 service.
4. HCLTech Cloud Workload Protection (CWP) powered by Palo Alto Networks: A service leveraging Prisma Cloud, Cortex XDR and container firewalls to secure workloads across hyperscalers, including web application and API security for protection against the OWASP Top 10 and zero-day vulnerabilities.
5. HCLTech Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Service powered by Palo Alto Networks: Leveraging Palo Alto Networks technologies (including Cortex XDR, Cortex XSOAR and Cortex Xpanse) providing automated threat detection and response services based on the MITRE ATTACK framework, delivering faster detection, response and containment of threats.

For added insights on cyber transformation, please review our recently conducted LinkedIn Live session discussing Cyber Transformation: Strategies for Modernizing Your Security Practices.