According to industry analysts there are over 3,000 cyber security products now worldwide, and over 1,200 companies just in the UK offering some kind of cyber security service. These are quite worrying numbers when you consider that the cyber problems around our planet now are worse than they have ever been. These large amounts of products and services are simply not fixing the global cyber issues.
It is not easy for an organisation to cut through the fog of so many products and companies to try and spend its limited budget wisely. Adding layer upon layer of security products also adds technical complexity and may introduce more problems than it solves.
One area that has been ignored in recent times is way down at layer 1 on the OSI model. Yep, the physical cable and its unique ability to be unplugged when required. Not enough organisations use airgaps to protect their networks and data. For something so low cost and easy to implement it is rather strange that these are not more commonplace.
Airgaps have so many uses, such as segregating networks, separating development and test networks from production networks, circuit-breakers for WANs, MAN’s and LANs, protecting the data on servers when not in use, keeping back-up data off-line and secure from attack and ransomware, and the list goes on.
The latest DPNS-type Intelligent Airgaps are examples of how Layer 1 can make a valuable contribution to fixing todays modern complex cyber problems.