Enterprise architecture (EA) generally encompasses business, information, and tech architecture. The structure provided by a mature EA is a blueprint to align technology infrastructure, processes, and information within an enterprise with overall business goals and strategies. It’s critical for shaping a proactive and holistic business strategy that can be agile in the face of disruption. The practice enables digital transformation as it empowers stakeholders to define the current architecture of a business and a roadmap for future changes.

 In the age of constant technological advancement, an enterprise architect’s role has grown into a strategic business partnership with the CIO to enable scalability, configurable software, and better overall integration.

Unfortunately, security architecture is often considered a separate practice. In best cases, security architecture is shoehorned into EA as an afterthought. As cyber resilience hinges on visibility and integration, EA provides a robust foundation as a comprehensive and adaptable systems management strategy.

The Evolving Threat Landscape in Europe 

As centralized operations give way to distributed networks, businesses must contend that the latter, though mostly beneficial, provides a larger attack surface for bad actors. Advancing technologies like AI are also powering increasingly sophisticated threats, such as ready-made social engineering attacks.

This is particularly alarming in Europe, which experienced the highest percentage of cyber incidents in 2023 compared to Asia-Pacific, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East (IBM). In fact, Europe experienced a 34% increase in cyberattacks year over year according to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2024.

In Europe, 44% of the attacks in 2023 were malware incidents while 32% were data thefts and leaks. IBM also spotted an alarming 266% upsurge in infostealers. This aligns with findings that the top two initial attack vectors are valid credentials and phishing at 30% each.

While organizations are pouring money into shoring up their threat detection and prevention capabilities, cybercriminals are working hard to obtain valid credentials as it is an easier way to carry out attacks. 

Alarmingly, IBM also found that a whopping 84% of critical infrastructure incidents had initial attack vectors that could have been mitigated. The report also noted that 33% of malicious attacks in Europe involved the use of legitimate tools.

Closing the Security Gap with EA 

More than ever, this emphasizes the benefits of comprehensively integrating security into EA. It empowers executives to place security considerations at the core of a company’s tech decision-making and implementation, thereby reducing costs. IBM found that the average cost of a data breach reached a peak in 2023 of USD 4.45 million.

Additionally, a security-by-design approach to EA solves the integration issue while streamlining security processes by reducing redundancies. Importantly, organizations with higher security system complexity experienced a higher average cost of data breaches at USD 5.28 million (IBM).

An improved security posture also leads to better compliance with European legislations like the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), NIS Directive, and the EU AI Act – which means further cost savings by avoiding fines. Between January and June 2024, 123 fines have been issued under the GDPR totaling €139.85 million.

Ultimately, all this leads to a healthier brand reputation and increased customer trust – two key elements to sustaining a competitive advantage in the European market.

Risk-based Approach to Security Integration in EA 

It’s important to embed security measures and frameworks into all the layers of EA including business, information, application, and technology to build cyber resilience. The security-by-design mindset is about proactively addressing security and compliance risks rather than reacting to security incidents after they happen.

It’s also essential for CIOs, CISOs, and enterprise architects to collaborate with the rest of the C-suite and security teams in aligning security requirements and capabilities with the organization’s risk appetite and business objectives.

A risk-based approach to the integration of EA for comprehensive cybersecurity is guided by the current risk landscape and an organization’s risk appetite. There are several EA frameworks that can be used in a risk-based approach including the NIST Risk Management Framework, The Open Group Architecture Framework, and the Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture (SABSA) which all follow a general flow.

Here are some steps to kickstart this integration:

i. Assess business risks and opportunities 

As a first step, enterprise architects need to work with the C-suite to outline the organization’s business context, objectives, risk appetites, and opportunities.

This includes:

• Identifying and meticulously detailing all critical business assets, processes, and information databases.
• Identifying potential cyberthreats to each asset, including individual vulnerabilities, likelihood of attack, and predicted impact of a security incident.
• Determining the organization’s risk appetite and tolerance levels.
• Creating an easily accessible and holistic enterprise-wide view of the organization’s risk profile.

ii. Define security requirements and controls 

Based on the risk profile, enterprise architects can work with security teams to tailor security requirements and controls to mitigate the potential risks that have been identified.

This includes:

• Establishing security policies, standards, and guidelines that are aligned with business and operational needs.
• Identifying which security capabilities are needed to protect the most critical assets and which may need to be updated.
• Selecting the appropriate security measures to implement that would address the identified vulnerabilities.

iii. Implement security measures into existing architecture 

Once a risk profile has been outlined and measures have been selected, it’s time for implementation. The goal here is to integrate security into the design of the existing architecture which supports business objectives while effectively managing needs and risks.

This involves:

• Mapping security capabilities to various layers of architecture such as business, application, data, and technology.
• Ensuring the security protocols and measures are a critical part of the process.
• Making adjustments where necessary, weighing the tradeoff between security and efficiency in various architectural decisions.
• Aligning security measures to ensure the potential for flexibility, scalability, and interoperability.

iv. Monitor and assess regularly 

Security is an ongoing task. An architecture is best secured with continuous monitoring, assessment, and adaptation to evolving threats and dynamic business needs.

This means:

• Ensuring comprehensive threat intelligence by monitoring the organization’s security posture, identifying new risks, and staying ahead of vulnerabilities.
• Regularly reviewing and updating security policies, protocols, and architecture.
• Adapting the security architecture to accommodate changes in business, technology, and threat landscapes.
• Incorporating lessons learned and best practices into the monitoring cycle to inform and improve security architecture over time.

Key Factors to Ensuring Cyber Resilience with EA 

i. Stakeholder involvement 

To ensure successful integration of security into EA, stakeholder involvement is the most important factor. Buy-in from all stakeholders across business units is not optional.

Implementation has the best chance of success when the C-suites, EA teams, security teams, developers, business managers, and line managers are involved during both the planning and implementation stages.

Each team has a unique perspective of the business and individual insight into their work processes, flows, and needs. Together, this forms a holistic view of business needs, goals, and strategies. The enterprise architect has the mammoth task of coordinating these sometimes-disparate functions to ensure efficiency throughout the process and ensuring that security and business needs are aligned at all levels.

ii. Tech Landscape 

Another key element to the successful integration of security into EA is keeping up with the dynamic tech landscape. From the digital wave to digital transformation, Industry 4.0, and everything in between, technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate. Whether it’s AI, augmented reality, or blockchain, it pays to stay updated on the latest available tech that can strengthen your security posture. These technologies can lead to a more efficient and robust security architecture, enable real-time tracking, improve predictive analytics, and empower quicker decision-making.

iii. Threat Intelligence 

In the realm of cybersecurity, nothing is as useful as cyberthreat intelligence. Collecting, processing, and analyzing data on cybersecurity threats enables security teams to understand potential targets, attack behaviors, and motives of bad actors.

Having a team that stays abreast of the latest in threat intelligence can empower security teams and enterprise architects to be proactive and data-driven in their work. IBM reported that cyber intelligence highlights trends, patterns, and relationships that provide a comprehensive understanding of actual threats that are organization-specific, detailed, contextual, and actionable. Threat intelligence is an indispensable tool in the modern cybersecurity and EA toolkit.

Cybersecurity in EA is Indispensable 

As the threat landscape evolves, particularly in Europe where cyber incidents have surged, a robust and integrated approach to cybersecurity becomes essential. Enterprise architects play a pivotal role in embedding security measures into all layers of EA to create an IT infrastructure that is cyber-resilient in an increasingly interconnected world.

This proactive stance will not only safeguard critical assets but also streamline security processes, reduce redundancies, and ensure the organization’s agility in the face of technological advancements and emerging threats.