Stephan Le Roux is district manager of RSA, The Security Division of EMC Southern Africa.

The world of security seems to be continuously changing shape, compelling organisations to be aware of this rapidly shifting threat landscape and forcing the security industry to rethink – yet again – how to combat the rising tide of advanced, targeted cyber attacks.

There is no doubt that security needs to evolve from conventional, siloed and perimeter-based security to advanced security systems designed for speed. These solutions will allow organisations to rapidly identify, analyse and respond to threats. At the very least, these systems should be risk-based, agile and contextual.

From a risk perspective, organisations should consider how vulnerable they are to attack, how likely they are to be targeted and the value of what’s at risk. Intelligence about their potential attackers and most valuable assets shows where to focus their efforts, such as what systems to protect and what users to closely monitor.

As far as agility is concerned, I’ve already mentioned that the threat landscape will continue to evolve. A successful outcome requires that organisations have the agility to process, incorporate and analyse new sources of internal and external intelligence – on the fly. Automation is absolutely essential for security to work at the speed and scale of the networks and cyber threats we face.

Last but not least, incident response, investigation and remediation are most effective when a security event is delivered with complete context around it. The success of prioritising and decision-making depends on having the best information available. Organisations must adopt a “big data” view of information security in which their security teams have real-time access to all the information relevant to the detection of security problems. Big data combined with high-speed analytics provides the actionable intelligence needed to defend against advanced threats.

Meet RSA, The Security Division of EMC Southern Africa, at the ITWeb Security Summit, taking place at the Sandton Convention Centre from 15 to 18 May.