The Security Of B2B: Enabling An Unbounded Enterprise

Many security and risk professionals seek to implement fine-grained security controls that span traditional boundaries and perimeters for their organizations. Businesses today have global operations and numerous trusted partners that constantly access their corporate resources. If this weren't challenging enough, partners can now access corporate information and resources via entirely new methods, such as mobile devices and Web 2.0 technologies. In addition, the advent of Smart Critical Infrastructure technologies that are vertical, specific, and that increase information-sharing between physical devices, such as sensors and core IT systems, will create an entirely new partner ecosystem. With the evolving nature of business-to-business (B2B) interactions, the security controls need to advance as well. Forrester sees four tiers of access control emerging in the B2B ecosystem: application, data, network, and physical. Security professionals need to include these access controls in their strategy to develop a comprehensive B2B security architecture.