Cyber Security Architecture

Service Overview

We believe that effective security needs to be designed-in as part of your underlying systems architecture. Our Cyber Security Architecture services will ensure your company’s technology platform is developed in accordance with the relevant security principles and that it offers “defense in depth” from the high-risk cyber threats.

Our service covers:

  • Solutions architecture
  • Security principles
  • Architecture patterns
  • Systems Integration
  • Cloud services
  • Mobile solutions

For each of these areas, we can design from the ground-up or we can review and advise on established platforms.

Solutions Architecure

With the solution architecture we can work with you to ensure cyber security concerns are addressed across your entire technology stack. This includes:

  • Defining or reviewing network and deployment models
  • Identifying security zones within the architecture
  • Server hardening
  • Reviewing firewall configurations
  • Leveraging network appliances
  • Designing high-availability architectures

This service can be tailored to sign the spotlight on a single system or involve taking an enterprise view and looking across your entire IT portfolio in order to develop a security platform from which all of your systems will benefit.

Security Principles

Establishing a set of architectural principles provides an excellent mechanism for both directing and validating all decision making when it comes to system design. Defining a set of security principles up-front in the development process will lay the groundwork for ensuring information security is addressed as part of your underlying architecture. Here, we can provide examples of the common security principles as well as assisting in developing principles that are specific to your particular business drivers.

We can also ensure the principles you develop align with the trust principles (now critical services) of an SSAE 16 SOC 2 report of security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy.

Architecture Patterns

In addition to principles, we can also advise on the use of architectural patterns. Patterns form the building blocks of your technology architecture. When used correctly, architectural patterns can ensure designs encompass the relevant industry best practices needed to guard against cyber threats. In addition, the choice of the right building blocks can help to offload security concerns to technology services and tools in order to reduce costs.

Systems Integration

Any integration between systems and applications immediately presents an additional threat vector. The increasing demand for open APIs and the rise in prevalence of micro-services means modern systems offer a large attack surface.

We can security-harden your integration points by advising on designs for authentication, authorization and channel encryption. We can also assist in the development of your integration architecture in order to design a solution that adopts the most appropriate technologies, tools, standards and patterns.

Some examples of the types of interfaces we cover are:

  • Web services
  • REST-based APIs
  • HL7, FHIR and other specialized integration protocols
  • Data integration through ETL
  • Legacy file transfer solutions

This service also aligns with our penetration testing service, where we can target specific tests against each interface to identify any potential vulnerabilities.

Cloud Services

With our cloud consultancy service we can advise on:

  • Operating a secure hybrid architecture using a composite of on-premise and cloud-based services
  • Securing your critical data both at rest and in-transit in the cloud
  • Ensuring or confirming compliance with the trust principles of a SOC 2 report for a SAAS product
  • Reviewing potential vendor SAAS solutions to confirm they have sufficient cyber attack countermeasures in place

Mobile Solutions

Mobile devices allow our business to travel with us but they also present challenges when these devices are lost or compromised.

For mobile devices we can:

  • Advise on and formulate specific mobile security policies
  • Work with you to enable polices such as BYOD to be employed without placing company data and services at risk
  • Using mobile application container solutions to allow business data to be securely held on private devices
  • Undertake penetration testing of mobile application

Please contact us for more information on our Cyber Security Architecture services.