5 min read
How Transportation & Logistics Companies Are Tackling Network Security
Kelly Barner : July 10, 2025
“This is a long standing discussion within the networking and security industry: is there a perimeter? I think the reality is the perimeter still exists because it's a data and logical perimeter, but it doesn't exist anymore as a physical perimeter.”
- Ken Rutsky, Chief Marketing Officer at Aryaka
As network connectivity advances, the concept of network perimeter must as well. Especially in the transportation and logistics sector, where assets and personnel are constantly on the move, companies are constantly being forced to rebalance access and security.
To learn more about the network security priorities of executive decision makers, I recently spoke with Ken Rutsky, Chief Marketing Officer at Aryaka, about their first Network Security Trends in Transportation and Logistics report, part of a series of research efforts looking at network security trends for different industries.
When the Business is Everywhere at Once
According to Ken, the fundamental challenge facing transportation and logistics companies today isn’t just data protection but creating secure environments for data is constantly on the move.
Unlike manufacturing facilities with defined physical boundaries, transportation companies need secure networks that extend to trucks on highways, distribution centers across regions, and mobile workers who are accessing systems from all around the country or the world.
As Ken puts it, “I’ve got to worry about – since I’m so dependent on digital data – even those moving users and assets. They can be anywhere, needing to either send data or access an application.”
This mobility can create unprecedented complexity.
“For example,” he continued, “those paths from the wireless that you might use in a truck… once it gets to that network and it needs to transfer between the distribution center and the headquarters, that’s a very complex path, and you have to worry about performance in all those areas.”
This reality forces us to rethink what we mean by network security. The days of employees having a desk with one phone line in one office building are long gone… Now we need secure policies that follow users and assets wherever they go, both physically and digitally.
The Problem of the Vanishing Perimeter
How to define “network perimeter” and conceptualize its borders has become one of the most contentious debates in cybersecurity, and transportation companies are living proof of why.
When your workforce is so diverse and disparate, from drivers accessing corporate applications from truck cabs to distribution managers checking inventory from their mobile phones, traditional security boundaries become meaningless. Or, at best, very hard to pin down.
“This is a long-standing discussion within the networking and security industry: is there a perimeter?” Ken said. “And I think the reality is that the perimeter still exists because it’s a data and logical perimeter, but it doesn’t exist anymore as a physical perimeter.”
We can’t expect everyone to have a security firewall in every vehicle. The solution, however, isn’t to abandon the concept of perimeter altogether, which is the security equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Instead, it needs to be reimagined to meet the needs of a mobile, digital, and a diverse workforce. As Ken described it, “If I’m a distribution manager out on a truck and I’m on my mobile phone and want to access a corporate application, … the organization wants me to have the same security apply, even though I’m doing it in a truck on a phone.”
But What About Cost?
When Aryaka surveyed C-level executives in transportation and logistics, they discovered that simplifying and reducing the cost of network operations was a top priority for leaders. For anyone familiar with cybersecurity, this sets off some pretty loud alarm bells. Cost reduction and robust security don’t usually go hand in hand.
But, Ken points out, perhaps there is a way to achieve both. That holy grail of savings plus security may not be that unattainable after all.
“The answer is ‘yes,’ you can do it if you do it smart … one of the ways you can become more operationally efficient is to have a single infrastructure.”
The key lies in consolidation rather than cutting corners. Ken added, “If you converge the networking with the network security, you can consolidate vendors and eliminate products, and every time you do that, you remove complexity from your operations.”
This approach becomes even more important at scale, where larger organizations don’t always see an exponential increase in resources dedicated to network security.
“If you’re a 1,000-person organization, you might have two or three people in networking and network security. If you’re a 10,000-person organization, you might have 30, but you’ve also got 10 times as much work.”
Same Old Scam, But With New Targets
Perhaps the most sobering finding from the research at Ken’s firm was that over 80 percent of respondents identified staying on top of network security threats as their top challenge. This marks a dramatic shift even from just a few years ago when transportation companies typically didn’t see themselves – or they weren’t – high-value targets.
Unfortunately for transportation and logistics, network security threats are no longer reserved for a select few industries. Malicious entities don’t discern; they follow the money, which is something supply chain logistics are in no short supply.
“Five or 10 years ago, the hackers and the people who were doing malicious things were attacking high-value targets like banking or healthcare,” said Ken. “But now we have people who are trying to disrupt supply chains, and they don’t care whether they disrupt it because they just want to or they want to get money from you with ransomware, and we know that transportation logistics companies have money.”
Bad actors who are financially motivated are particularly dangerous for logistics companies, and they often have organizations over a barrel because, as Ken explained, “if they say ‘I’m going to shut the network down if you don’t do this,’ it’s a really tough spot to be in because we’re also dependent on the network.”
In a Twist, AI Might Actually Be Making Network Security Harder
As if the current challenges to network security weren’t complex enough, AI is adding another layer of unknowns, threats, and complications. For example, Ken said, “one of the changes that’s happening in the network today is AI traffic. For us, it’s just another type of traffic, and we need to worry about performance, observability, and security of that traffic.”
AI isn’t just creating new traffic patterns; it’s also enabling new types of applications that require different security considerations. As we move from basic AI usage to things like RAG (retrieval augmented generative AI where you can grab data in real time) or agentic AI (where AI systems don’t just answer queries but execute business processes), network security requirements have to adapt.
“I think in the next year, we’ll see more RAG, more agentic deployment, and a transformation of traffic from normal SaaS and cloud traffic to more AI-driven traffic, and this will change some of the performance characteristics as well as the security risk.”
The Math is Unforgiving
Threats to network security are increasing faster than many organizations’ headcounts can keep up, forcing some companies to leverage technology rather than adding additional personnel. It’s no surprise, then, that doing more with less is still a top concern, as the survey revealed, but struggles with understaffing and undertraining don’t always mean a network security breach is inevitable.
The solutions, he says, ultimately involves both technological and organizational changes, “by bringing these teams, not just technology together but organizationally together, so that they have a common vision, a common platform of work and workflow, and a common investment in tools.”
Ultimately, considering the risks on the table and what the data says from leaders, his advice for transportation and logistics navigating disruption and uncertainty emphasizes partnership over self-reliance. In a word, don’t go it alone, he says.
“I think it’s so important for organizations to partner with technology providers because we have to stay on top of this, and you have a transportation business to run. You’ve got to be up and running every day.”
