What the security industry can learn from a great World Cup defense

Last week, I joined millions of people in cheering on Costa Rica during their improbable World Cup quarterfinal match against the Netherlands. Remarkably, the Ticos held a superior Netherlands team scoreless through 120 minutes of regulation and extra time.

The key to their defense was a level of coordination I have not seen from other teams. Throughout the match, every player seemed to be involved in the defense at every moment. They moved like clockwork, communicating and shifting positions to keep the ball out of the goal.

Wouldn’t it be great if security technologies worked together as elegantly and effectively as Costa Rica’s defense?

Unfortunately, today’s security products don’t work that way.

Instead, they offer layers of security that each operate in isolation. It’s as if the midfielders, the backs, and the goalkeeper were each trying their best to stop the attack in their part of the field but not collaborating with their teammates in the other areas.

(Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good description of the U.S. defense. Their “final layer,” goalie Tim Howard, was as effective as one could hope, but he got no help from the rest of the team.)

At Sophos, we’ve recently launched a product strategy we call Galileo. It’s designed to deliver coordinated, context-aware security that is simpler and more effective than the disjointed layers of protection available today.

Instead of treating policy enforcement, threat prevention, compromise detection and threat response as independent tasks, Galileo recognizes that these should all be part of a unified effort to protect users and data.

Over the coming months and years, you’ll hear more about Galileo. More importantly, though, you’ll see the strategy reflected in our products.

Galileo will enable true Next-Generation Endpoint protection against malware, data loss and advanced persistent threats (APTs), managed simply with user-based policies via Sophos Cloud.

It will make our industry-leading UTM and Next-Generation Firewall technology even more effective at securing every aspect of the network.

And, best of all, the products will work together—like those talented Ticos—communicating and responding as a cohesive unit to shut out attackers. And, really, isn’t that the goal?