Is your IT infrastructure up to today’s security challenges?
As business and IT infrastructures continue to grow in complexity, companies face a greater chance of security vulnerabilities than ever before across all divisions of their business — from IT and HR to marketing and finance.
That’s why it’s essential that every layer of your company’s IT hardware and software stack remains secured – end-to-end. While several security challenges exist, visibility into your full IT stack can help you simplify security at every layer. And it’s easier than you may think.
Today's chief
security
challenges
According to “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2019” conducted by The Poneman Institute and sponsored by IBM, four scenarios pose the greatest security challenges.
Internal and
external threats
“2019 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Overview.” Ponemon Institute, July 2019.
“2019 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Overview.” Ponemon Institute, July 2019.
“2019 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Overview.” Ponemon Institute, July 2019.
Business and
IT complexity
breach due to system complexity1
“2019 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Overview.” Ponemon Institute, July 2019.
Tighter regulations
equals new risks
compliance failures1
“2019 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Overview.” Ponemon Institute, July 2019.
compliance issues2
“Awash in Regulations, Companies Struggle with Compliance. Taylor Armerding. Forbes, August 2019
IT vulnerabilities
system glitches1
“2019 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Overview.” Ponemon Institute, July 2019.
human error1
“2019 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Overview.” Ponemon Institute, July 2019.
Six key aspects to protect your IT infrastructure
You can address these IT security challenges with a comprehensive, yet simplified approach to security and compliance across the entire stack.
From the processor and firmware to the hypervisor, operating system and system management, integrating your IT infrastructure end-to-end brings security at every layer of the stack into focus.
Hardware:
Fortify your foundation
A strong foundation starts at the hardware level. You can evaluate the strength of your security foundation based on your ability to:
- Subscribe to security alerts
- Prevent unauthorized access to apps and data
- Run security audits for compliance obligations
- Implement measures to protect against advanced cyberattacks
Firmware:
Secure boot-up and run
At the firmware level, the “secure boot” capability documents that the firmware is digitally signed and verified. You can:
- Protect data — at rest and in motion
- Efficiently move workload data between servers
- Compress and encrypt Life Partition Mobility (LPM) data to speed and secured operations
- Implement strong isolation controls
- Protect and separate the firmware and hypervisor
Operating system:
Meet compliance and regulations
Regardless of your operating system, you should secure it with a solution that:
- Provides security capabilities to detect vulnerabilities
- Helps you address your security and compliance regulations
- Delivers the efficiency to solidify ongoing IT projects
- Offers separate production and development testing environments with no data leakage
Hypervisor workloads:
Migrate data with ease
Workloads require migration. That means you need a secured IT environment that lets you:
- Consolidate workloads with no data leakage
- Leverage low-load, easy-to-consume crypto capabilities
- Protect systems integrity, further solidify the firmware level and secure cloud environments
There are multiple hypervisor layers. Learn about each one.
Hypervisor VMs:
See your security end-to-end
VMs require a solution that provides an end-to-end view of security events throughout the VM’s lifecycle, including when:
- It’s brought under management
- It’s patched
- File integrity monitoring events occur
- Admins make compliance status changes
- Configuration changes
Hypervisor Containers:
Secure multicloud deployment
Containers are portable and have a smaller footprint than VMs. But they still need security measures that include:
- Functionality that allows for containers to remain secure, during and after deployment
- Open source, multicloud management, configuration and automationacross traditional environments
- An open, fast and secure way to run core business applications
- Full software stack support, ongoing security, compliance andversion compatibility
Evolve your IT infrastructure security for today
With multiple layers in your IT stack requiring constant supervision, managing your security can be resource intensive.
That’s where IBM Power Systems™ comes in.
It gives you full visibility of your hardware and software. It protects the stack with comprehensive end-to-end security at every layer — all with a simple web-based UI.
Suddenly, everything’s in view.
Learn how you can secure your IT infrastructure for today and tomorrow’s security challenges with IBM Power Systems. Download “A multi-layered approach to security with POWER9” e-book now.
