At the RSA Conference Symantec Corp. President and CEO Enrique Salem believes that to address the rapidly changing and increasingly challenging cyber security situation, a paradigm shift must occur in the industry – where organizations should tackle security with an integrated effort and not rely on piecemeal “solutions” for each problem. Salem calls this “operationalizing” security.

Now that attackers are now shifting to targeted and tailored attacks designed to steal sensitive information instead of mass distribution of malware, the “fragmented” approach to managing security, storage and system management will only present holes and lapses in security. The organization may end up with a very “manual” way of dealing with the problem which may not be able to cope with the threats. Companies also face the concern of employees abusing or tampering with their data.

 An example of an ideal automated, operationalized system would detect unauthorized hardware or software being used on a machine, and alerting both backup systems for important data and informing relevant individuals about the breach. The system needed automated services connected with each other, as well as a view of security across the whole system and not just in individual stops.

According to Salem, software screening applications will still be integral to security systems, but still won’t be sufficient on its own. Symantec has been working on an automated screening application that will allow applications access to the system based on its reputation; looking at factors such as source, age, and prevalence. An administrator will be able to customize these variables to tailor the configuration to the risk level the system can take. This reputation-based security software Symantec is developing will be integrated into both future consumer and enterprise level security products.

This paradigm is manifesting itself in upcoming products from other vendors, focusing on helping the management of various security applications such as spam filters, antivirus applications and others.