For IT security teams, remote working has exacerbated an already growing problem over device visibility. The explosion of IoT, containers, cloud and BYOD has created far more endpoints than organisations realise. Marco Rottigni, Chief Technical Security Officer for EMEA at Qualys, calls this Digital Biodiversity.
To explain what he means, the scale of the problem it creates and what can be done about, Rottigni talked with Enterprise Times. Rottigni explained digital biodiversity saying: “It renders, in my view, the metaphor of the many species or digital species that modern organisations, especially in this pandemic times, have to deal with.”
Discovering what devices an organisation has on its network has always been a challenge. In an age of IoT and with increasing numbers of remote workers, that has gotten worse. Rottigni said: “We need to divide from a visibility and security perspective, the universe into two macro-categories. What we can see we can manage it.
“Then there is the unmanaged universe. That is something that exists as part of my digital landscape. It may be a smart bulb or an Amazon Echo. It may be Bring Your Own Device or bring your own smartphone or tablet. I need to get an understanding that it exists.”
Even when you can manage it, there are issues over what to patch and when. Rottigni points out that you need to consider prioritisation when applying patches. He evidences this by explaining how a scan that detected 104,000 vulnerabilities could be reduced to just 39 patches.
To hear more of what Rottigni had to say, listen to the podcast.
Where can I get it?
obtain it, for Android devices from play.google.com/music/podcasts
use the Enterprise Times page on Stitcher
use the Enterprise Times page on Podchaser
listen to the Enterprise Times channel on Soundcloud
listen to the podcast (below) or download the podcast to your local device and then listen there
