The Ones and Zeros Have Taken Over

Way back on August 1, 1981, MTV launched its cable channel with the music video “Video Killed the Radio Star.” The concept of the video’s title proved to be true, as the channel soon became a pop culture phenomenon, creating music stars from videos that started out with simplistic production and evolved into movie-sized, multimillion-dollar creative projects. Gone were the days when music stars were made through radio airplay. The entire industry shifted to a new strategy that focused on the changing media consumption habits of its customers.

It’s often shocking how quickly and massively industry-wide change can occur. And lately, technology is usually the driving force. Much like video shifted the way the music industry made its stars, the security industry is seeing a shift in the way it operates as the convergence of physical and cyber continues to create an unprecedented and complicated security landscape.

“The convergence of physical and cybersecurity represents an operational imperative for utilities, not merely an organizational preference,” said Joey St. Jacques in his feature article on convergence in this issue. “The threat landscape will continue evolving toward integrated attack strategies that exploit the intersection of physical and cyber vulnerabilities. Utilities that maintain siloed security operations will find themselves increasingly disadvantaged against sophisticated adversaries.”

Indeed, the evolution of technology has made the landscape challenging to say the least. But at the same time, the tools that physical and cyber teams use to better guard against increasingly sophisticated attacks are also evolving further and further into a digital space.

In his feature in this issue on the need to implement a unified governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platform, Brian Harrell talks of how technology can empower utility security professionals. , 

“Automation in physical GRC means no more outdated, manual processes,” said Harrell.  “Instead, we can leverage intelligent technologies to continuously validate access, manage risk dynamically and respond to threats faster.”

Whether we like it or not, utility security today is rooted in a digital landscape more than ever before. It’s time to eliminate your silos and manual security solutions now and look at ways to use evolving solutions to automate your processes. If not, you just might find your security may go the way of the radio star.