Earlier this year, we kicked off a campaign that was all about “Shipping **it Faster.” Speed to market is critical for any business to be able to proactively anticipate and respond to customer needs. In our fast-paced, technology-driven world — time is money. However, speed isn’t the only element that requires careful thought, planning, and consideration when you’re building enterprise-grade digital experiences. According to the Verizon 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, “74% of all breaches include the human element, with people being involved either via Error, Privilege Misuse, Use of stolen credentials or Social Engineering.” Organizations must prioritize their security posture and make sure that what they put into market keeps their customers, and their customers’ customers, safe from cyberattacks that can cause significant damage to brand reputation.
The attacker’s advantage
The old adage remains true today — defenders must get it right every time, whereas attackers only have to get it right once. The economic advantage of attackers, who have the ability to make large amounts of money for relatively low effort from anywhere with an internet connection, makes things extremely complex for defenders in charge of maintaining the security of their enterprise. Defenders are often financially constrained by budgets, as defensive toolsets and resources are often viewed by boards of directors as a line item expense and not a revenue generating line of business, with the added challenge of being tasked to prove ROI. But the reality is that properly-working defenses nearly always equate to “business as usual.” And when defenses don’t work properly, it’s critical for enterprises to keep in mind that, according to the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023, “the global average cost of a data breach in 2023 was $4.45 million, a 15% increase over three years”.
Economics of cybersecurity: investing in enterprise-grade defense
Brand reputation in the digital realm is critical to the success of any enterprise organization. When you think of the most successful and iconic companies, they understand that their brand is so much more than a logo. Their brand is their identity, their reputation, and for many of their customers — their brand is the reason they continue to buy. Believing in a brand as an experience and as something greater than just a means to make money is what sets those iconic companies apart from their competitors. And protecting that brand at all costs is imperative, especially in the face of rising cybercrime and economic headwinds.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the general availability of tools such as ChatGPT and Bard have built new avenues of accessibility. It’s no longer just the sophisticated actors with in-depth knowledge of hacking that are a cause for concern. The newly lowered barrier to entry has opened the door to the moonlighting opportunist, or maybe even the bored teenager, looking to dip their toes into the world of cybercrime. It’s critical that organizations prepare for the reality we now live in, where even people without knowledge of computer programming can experiment in building bad actor toolkits and launch fairly sophisticated cyberattacks. According to the 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, “83% of breaches involved External actors, and the primary motivation for attacks continues to be overwhelmingly financial driven, at 95% of breaches.” Where there is money to be made, you can nearly always expect people will find a way. And until the economic imbalance of the attacker/defender landscape (where carrying out attacks requires low effort and can result in high reward, and defending against attacks requires high effort and offers low reward) changes, the clear path forward is to build with security in mind every step of the way.
Building your brand securely
At Netlify, we believe security guardrails should be built-in so that it’s not just security teams carrying the burden of securing the organization. Security is everyone’s responsibility — including development teams, marketing teams, and third-party vendors. Netlify is on a mission to not only build a better web, but also to remove the friction that legacy security has historically added to development and deployment workflows. Security that gets in the way of getting work done or innovating is security that will ultimately fail due to creative workarounds or when teams toss it aside in the name of speed and performance. Security guardrails that allow for easy management, frictionless experiences, and give developers and product teams the confidence to build better is what we aim to deliver as an integral part of the experience building on the Netlify platform.
We are always looking forward to what’s coming but we also don’t ignore where we are now and how we got here. It has been made clear in the headlines that traditional security systems and approaches aren’t effective. Because security isn’t just checking boxes and a one-time implementation. Security is a continuous process that needs to adapt, evolve, and become part of the entire organization’s mindset and approach to building, deploying, and managing not just code, but also brand reputation, across all facets of the business.
How Netlify reinforces enterprise security
The current contentious geopolitical climate and rise of opportunistic scamming has further complicated securing and protecting digital brand assets from security threats. While it isn’t possible to anticipate every threat, everywhere, every time, it is possible to begin creating specific rules and defining digital boundaries that help to significantly cut down on the amount of unwanted traffic. This week, we will be announcing the general availability of Netlify Firewall Traffic Rules, which will help enterprise teams define granular rulesets at the L3 layer of the OSI stack, empowering a layered approach to securing digital infrastructure on Netlify.
When it comes to securing your brand, the human element cannot be ignored. Exposed environment variables and other infrastructure secrets — whether in code or in logs — are creating opportunities for bad actors to exploit infrastructure and gain unauthorized access to poison supply chains, gain footholds, and exfiltrate data from unsuspecting enterprises. When development teams are being tasked to do more with less and ship faster, it’s critical that they are provided with the right kinds of security guardrails to protect them from accidentally exposing variables and sensitive secrets — which is an all-too common mistake in the modern era. This week, we will also be announcing the general availability of Netlify Secrets Controller, a new capability designed to help teams keep environment variables and infrastructure secrets hidden based on granular controls defined by account administrators. Our new feature will also offer the groundbreaking capability to scan for secrets retroactively to help enterprise teams uncover exposed secrets and automatically fix the vulnerability.
Novel attack methods happening inside of everyday browsers are becoming more common every day. These types of attacks mean developers and security teams need to embrace the principles of zero trust across every area of their development and deployment — including being more intentionally explicit about what data is, and is not, allowed to be submitted to their web properties from any given browser. This week, we will be announcing an integration available for Netlify Content Security Policy (CSP), which takes the pain out of traditional Content Security Policies by offering a unique solution that is easy to implement, easier to maintain, and will help your team stay protected against common web exploits — such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and code injection attacks.
It’s time we start getting smarter than the attackers and staying one step ahead of the opportunists. And Netlify is here to help your team step up their security game.
You’re invited to Ship **it Securely with Netlify
Netlify takes security seriously. Our team is rising to the challenge of building in next-generation features to help you secure your infrastructure, by design, so your team can not only do more with less, but also build better foundations that will scale well into the future. We strive to create a platform that gives you the controls and the confidence to make security part of the process instead of an afterthought. We are your partner — and we are in this together.
This week, we invite you to follow along as we announce exciting new features already in general availability and ready for your team to start utilizing each day right here on our blog. We have three brand new on-demand webinars launching where we’ll dig in with the folks who built these incredible new features — the what, the why, the challenges, and the triumph. Get ready to Ship **it Securely with Netlify.
