What Is a Fabric of Security

A fabric of security is a combination of several threads of different security technologies all woven together to provide robust, comprehensive protection of an organization’s digital assets. Like a fabric, it is flexible and can be tailored to suit the needs of different types of organizations and solve a wide range of cybersecurity challenges.

A security fabric provides unique protection because instead of being forced to overly rely on one or two solutions, an organization gets the protection of several at the same time. Also, because solutions are intertwined, they can be centrally operated and optimized, reducing the people-hours and effort needed to make the security strategy work.

A security fabric is structured using multiple technologies and deployment infrastructures. This makes it a viable solution for a wider variety of digital environments.

With a fabric management center, an administrator can deploy and control critical resources such as network orchestration and automation, as well as security analytics that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution. With a unified console, it is easier to make universal—and granular—tweaks to your fabric of cyber defense tools.

You can also extend the fabric across multiple organizations using partnership solutions. In this way, you cut down on the number of gaps you have in your security environments while simultaneously getting the most out of your investment.

When dealing with multi-cloud environments, your security needs to be both cloud-native and scalable. With a cybersecurity fabric, you get a cloud-native solution that scales automatically according to your cloud infrastructure. The flexibility this affords you is a primary benefit of a security fabric. When powered by a central threat intelligence system, a cloud-based security fabric provides the latest threat intel to all assets protected by the system.

Information systems infrastructure benefits from fabric of security architecture because it centralizes your security operations, making their control and optimization more straightforward and less labor-intensive. With multiple security operations woven into a single security fabric architecture, it is easier to:

1. Discern which tools will best protect certain assets on your network
2. Put intentional redundancies in place to bolster your defenses
3. Coordinate mitigation steps in the event of an attack or breach

Endpoint protection is central to a security fabric because the more secure your endpoints, the smaller your attack surface. Each endpoint needs a security fabric connection, which will ensure that the endpoint is safe and the network is protected from the endpoint if it is compromised.

A security fabric protects your wireless local-area networks (WLANs) and local-area networks (LANs) because these are the focal points of many kinds of attacks. Further, when your WLANs and LANs are shielded from cyber criminals, you protect both your organization and those who connect to your networks. Even a virtual private network (VPN), when incorporated for remote workers or others, needs to be supported by a comprehensive security solution as an extra layer of protection.

Limiting network access, as well as ensuring those who need to connect to certain assets are able to, is a foundational element of your network’s functionality. This can be supported by a fabric of security because you can incorporate zero-trust access (ZTA). ZTA works on the premise of "never trust, always verify," which ensures users and devices obtain proper authentication before connecting.