The Unlikely Hero of Cybersecurity: Event-Driven Architecture

When you think of cybersecurity, you probably think about firewalls, WAPs, and securing network perimeters, right? It makes sense—these are all the tools and techniques that protect an organization from outside threats and forces. We get it, the last thing that comes to mind when you’re focusing on security is event-driven architecture (EDA). But that doesn’t mean EDA doesn’t play a part in cybersecurity. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. 

Cybersecurity is incredibly event-driven. 

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When it comes to protecting an organization around the clock, multiple systems need to be orchestrated with workflows, triggers and validation. Think about it. Security architects are already overwhelmed and burdened with thousands of alerts on the daily. Wouldn’t it be better to have an automated workflow set up that can analyze events and remediate alerts in real time? Duh! 😜 Event-driven architecture provides security teams with the unmatched ability to detect and address security events as they happen. In this article, we’re uncovering all the ways EDA can strengthen cybersecurity. Check it out! 

Automated Incident Management Strengthens an Organization’s Security Posture

It’s 3AM, all of your IT engineers and architects are home sleeping soundly in their beds. Meanwhile, alerts are filling up their email inboxes and your business’ entire network system is exposed to outside threat actors due to a compromised account password. What can be done? Not much. Because by the time you and your team reach the office in the morning, the threat actor could have already infiltrated your systems, stolen data, and sold it on the dark web. Terrifying? Yep, we know. 😬

Continuing with the example above, say that there was an event-driven workflow in place that automatically detected and remediated the security incident. The workflow would look somewhat like this:

With event-driven architecture, you can automatically address alerts no matter the time of day or whether your team is in the office or away on a fishing trip. In fact, 80% of Fortune 100 companies use event-driven architecture and 43% adopt EDA to respond to events and changes in real-time.

Event-Driven Architecture Accelerates Incident Response Times

According to the cybersecurity organization, Deep Instinct, it takes security teams approximately 24 hours to respond to a security incident upon detection. Event-driven architecture responds to security events in seconds. 🏃

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Orchestrating security tools and systems enables you to collate dozens of disparate cybersecurity tools to better prevent, detect, and remediate threats with rapid response times. As the state changes within your environment, the right event-driven architecture workflow will adjust and execute accordingly in near real-time. 

For example, say an employee receives a phishing email where a cybercriminal is trying to trick the employee into downloading malware on their device. With event-driven architecture, the moment the phishing email hits your email system, a designated workflow can detect the threat, block it from hitting the inbox, and notify the necessary team members of the attack—all within minutes. ⏰

EDA Automation Makes Staying Compliant Easy

One of the last things any security team wants is for their systems and networks to be out of cybersecurity compliance at any given time. Failing to comply with regulations such as the Payment Card Industry (PCI) or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can lead to hefty fines and millions of dollars in damages. 

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With event-driven architecture, you can build workflows to:

• Prevent unauthorized access to proprietary data
• Validate processes in accordance with compliance regulations and policies
• Stay updated with compliance requirements (GDPR, PCI, etc.)
• Automate low-value tasks to prevent human error and noncompliance issues

Essentially, event-driven architecture can even be leveraged to complete due diligence processes, streamline onboarding completion, and audit your compliance programs and protocols. 🔥

EDA Secures Sensitive and Proprietary Data 

EDA allows you to be proactive in your cybersecurity approach. When a security incident triggers a complex event, event-driven architecture workflows can take immediate action to prevent threats from breaching systems and stealing proprietary data. Effectively, EDA workflows can proactively help prevent ransomware, malware, adware, and hackers from accessing and exploiting sensitive data. 

Consider this example where the managed services provider (MSP), Dell Technologies, used EDA for server-side email encryption. As with many service providers, data and information regarding the systems need to be sent via email from the server-side components to the engineering and support teams. The problem? The server-side components do not have the ability to encrypt emails or event notifications.

To prevent data leakage from the internal customer environments to the managed service provider (email, SNMP traps or external API calls), this MSP used event-driven architecture as an email server. The results were effort estimation savings of 1.5 FTEs and the guaranteed delivery of encrypted emails according to security policy requirements. 

➡️ Check out the inspiring case study here.

Final Thoughts

The truth of the matter is, event-driven architecture is the unsung hero of cybersecurity. With the ability to proactively monitor and respond to threats around the clock with 24/7 automation and orchestration, it’s no surprise that even companies like Dell Technologies are using EDA to secure their data and organization.

What efficiencies and protections can event-driven architecture bring to your company? Get started with Direktiv and see for yourself.