Recent cyber security research suggests nearly 90 percent of companies’ security budgets go toward the perimeter. Ironically, the research reveals that only about 20 to 25 percent of breaches occur there — the rest happen on the inside. Does this mean that enterprises should reverse their spending ratio? Or will they have to keep spending steady at the parameter and — gasp — double or triple security spending overall?

To clear up the confusion, Lisa Martin (@Luccazara) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, spoke with Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research.  (*Disclosure below.)

Kerravala said that customers who buy security products from vendors are misaligned in how they are spending their money. He contended that they can keep their parameters strong, as well as secure the data inside the firewall without simply spending loads more money.

The key is that of the money spent on parameter security, 60 percent is spent on “people costs,” which could be cut out by automating security tasks, he stated.

Security fabric to the rescue?

Speaking of automation, Kerravala said that network security fabric has the automation capabilities to get companies out of the quagmire they are in with security nowadays; this basically boils down to more data to protect, which companies just keep throwing more and more products at. He believes an overhaul is overdue.

“You can’t move forward until you take a step back and simplify,” Kerravala’s said of his philosophy. “The concepts of the fabric are really aligned with that — it’s simplification, automation. And it removes a tremendous amount of the human burden from security operations, which frankly I think is holding things back.”

Network bottleneck breaking in 3 … 2 … 1

Automation, according to Kerravala, not only cuts people costs, so that companies can reallocate funds to data within the firewall, it generally speeds up their whole IT operation.

“In order to be a digital enterprise, you need to be agile, but you’re only as agile as your least agile IT component, and today that’s the network,” he explained.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2017. (*Disclosure: Fortinet Inc. and other companies sponsor some Accelerate 2017 segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Fortinet nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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