How security is driving network transformation and why that’s good news for future-readiness
Published by Colt Technology Services on October 28, 2025
Enterprises are navigating more rapid change than ever before, and their networks need to be up to the job of supporting a business through choppy waters. But why aren’t legacy networks suited for a world of hybrid working, cloud, XaaS, connected devices and sophisticated security threats, and what does that mean for the future?
In 2023, McKinsey declared that for businesses. In recent years we’ve seen a significant rise in geopolitical instability, a growing spotlight on climate risk and a global pandemic. These have had an inevitable impact on business strategy and operations, ranging from supply chain disruption to a major shift in working practices.
Enterprises have responded by embracing new technologies and new ways of working – like cloud, SaaS, IoT and remote working – that help them to be more flexible and efficient in the face of unpredictability.
These new ways of working, however, have opened fresh security vulnerabilities in legacy networks. At the same time, aging infrastructure is stifling the promise of these new tools and technologies and holding back true business agility. Small wonder, then, that less than 20% of enterprises feel their network is ready to support their needs over the next few years[1].
Boosting network security is the main reason for network transformation
Improving cybersecurity is the top driver for network transformation, citing this as a reason for modernisation. To understand why, we need to look at the way that legacy network security works.
Legacy security is based on the ‘castle and moat’ approach of securing the perimeter of the enterprise network. Corporate data and applications sit within the castle, and security solutions (such as firewalls and access control systems) create a moat around the outside.
When a person, service or application needs access to these corporate resources, a digital drawbridge is lowered to allow access inside the secure moat
Traditional security struggles with a blurred network perimeter
The castle and moat model worked well when corporate IT was centralised and had clear boundaries. However, IT and network architectures have changed dramatically in recent years.
Data, apps and services hosted in public clouds, IoT and mobile devices, XaaS and a huge rise in home and remote working have blurred the perimeter of corporate networks and made them difficult to define. As a result, it’s hard to put a secure boundary around the outside.
This blurring of the network boundary means more digital drawbridges are needed for the resources that are outside the castle. This introduces new points of vulnerability and massively increases the enterprise attack surface.
Another difficulty with this model is that with the rise of SaaS, a great deal of network traffic is now encrypted web traffic. It can be difficult to tell whether this is legitimate (data from a CRM platform, for example) or malicious (such as malware communicating with a control server). It’s like allowing a horse and cart into the castle without being able to see what’s hiding underneath the canopy of the wagon.
Threats are becoming more sophisticated and dangerous
The cyber threat environment has changed in recent years, too. Bad actors are harnessing AI to create more successful, hyper-personalised attacks and intelligent malware. These are much more difficult to detect with traditional security approaches.
There are more zero-day vulnerabilities, too, which can evade traditional signature-based antivirus solutions. The difficulty in detecting this kind of attacks makes them particularly dangerous, as a lot of damage can be inflicted before they’re identified. According to the Five Eyes cyber agencies, of the 15 most exploited vulnerabilities of 2023, the majority were )].
The ineffectiveness of traditional vulnerability management also makes it difficult to comply with newer cybersecurity resilience regulations like NIS2 and DORA.
The legacy of the past is holding back the promise of the future
Many enterprises have gone through significant change over the years, such as growing headcounts, the opening of new offices, entrance into new markets, and mergers and acquisitions. This has led to a complex mix of security and network products and standards across the organisation, and a level of that’s difficult to escape.
This combination of increasing network vulnerability, complexity and inconsistency has become a major barrier to organisational agility. It creates a bottleneck, hampering the adoption of valuable new technologies, holding back organisational growth and making it harder for organisations to respond effectively to the changes around them.
While traditional security solutions such as firewalls and signature-based antivirus software still have an important place, it’s clear they’re no longer adequate to protect today’s disparate enterprise networks in this new environment. In our next blog, we’ll explore how organisations can transform the network to create a standardised, software-defined infrastructure that has security and agility built in and is ready for whatever the future throws at them.
[1] IDC 2024, EMEA Enterprise Communications and Collaboration Survey
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