Your Network Security Strategy: Time to Update or Reboot?

As the need for stronger network protection grows ever more urgent, many organizations are studying their security strategies and wondering whether rapidly evolving threat vectors have rendered their existing plans obsolete. This observation often leads IT and business leaders to ask themselves a critical question: is it best to keep updating an existing security strategy or to simply start over from scratch.There are several instances when an organization may want to consider creating an entirely new network strategy rather than updating the current one, said Frank Downs, director of the cybersecurity practice at ISACA, an international professional association that's focused on IT governance. "One of the most significant [motivations] is an attack that reveals that the fundamental elements of the strategy are weak, indicating that a complete overhaul should be considered," he observed. "An example of this type of incident includes an attack that impacts data in motion within the network and as it leaves the network, such as a man-in-the-middle attack at a gateway point.