How to Build a Context Aware Network Security Policy

Fragmented networks, blind network security policy changes, and lack of change validation increase risk. Context-aware network security policies can help.

Kim Maibaum

Senior Product Marketing Manager Skybox Security

The number of new vulnerabilities continues to rise . While companies may be quick to offer patches, internal teams are overwhelmed trying to keep up with the new, more sophisticated ways cybercriminals can penetrate your networks. Unfortunately, many traditional defenses struggle to keep up with the growing attack surface.

To stay ahead, look at your network from a different perspective. A context-aware network security policy management suite provides unique insights that enable your network and security teams to better understand your weaknesses for a more secure environment.

The challenges with traditional network policies

Network security policy management does a lot to protect an organization. But in today’s hyper-speed world, traditional methods are no longer enough. To build more resilience, organizations need to look at strengthening their defenses. However, this isn’t without its challenges. Some of the most common struggles are:

• Fragmented security landscape: Many large organizations unintentionally have security and network teams working in silos . This can lead to errors, such as one team making configuration changes without the other’s knowledge or consent, unintentionally allowing direct traffic between corporate and manufacturing networks. Collaboration brings to light important context that helps to better protect their cybersecurity landscape and allows for checks and balances.
• Reactive instead of proactive security: Today’s security and network teams are resource-constrained. In large environments with too many tools, these teams often struggle to keep up with the volume of change management requests. By fully understanding an enterprise’s attack surface and looking for ways to maximize efficiency, teams can take a more proactive approach to managing their networks – and security.
• Incomplete vulnerability validation for policies: Accurately validating new policies is essential. If the network team lacks context for what could happen, the result is blind change management. Without context from other departments, they may unintentionally introduce new vulnerabilities with a new policy and rule deployment.

While every organization is different, collaboration between your network and security teams help provide helpful context for network rules that better protect sensitive data. So, how do you get started?

Building a strong network security policy program

Designing a strong network policy early on helps improves security by protecting your network from unauthorized users or changes. While this can be a time-consuming process, once established, your teams will work more efficiently and have confidence that your network is well protected.

Here are some steps to take to achieve this:

• Aggregate and share data across teams for a comprehensive understanding of your business. This not only removes silos but also ensures you have the context to understand your networks’ data sets fully.
• Define the security objectives that will become the backbone of your network security policy framework.
• As a team, design your network security policy program. Use this as an opportunity to clean up data to optimize networks and increase the effectiveness of both network and security operations.
• Implement technical controls and, where possible, automate redundant manual processes. This helps reduce the chance of misconfigurations or other human errors and frees up time for you to focus on other priorities.
• Foster a “security-first” company culture through user awareness and training programs.
• Implement continuous compliance by continuously maintaining recertification and verification of your firewall rule sets.

Security Policy Management - Make network security policy management easier and more effective. Automate workflows and reduce network misconfigurations.

Why move to a “context-aware” network security policy management

While there’s never a one-size-fits-all solution to network security policy management, taking a context-based approach is one of the best ways to improve your firewall and network processes while improving security. Being aware of context when creating standard processes, such as firewall rule creation, recertification, and deprovisioning, allows you to close security gaps , limit vulnerability exposures, and maintain continuous compliance. This is because:

1. Context-aware network security policy management enables the merging and analyzing of data sets across security, network, and cloud technologies. The security and network teams collaborate to gain a full understanding of your attack surface before making policy changes.
2. By testing policy changes and new configurations before deployment, teams have visibility to security issues these changes may cause. They can also validate policies and rules with full network context before implementation.
3. Establishing a strong security lifecycle management approach allows you to simulate policy changes to mitigate vulnerability exposure proactively. This gives security teams insights and tools to recognize good policies quickly and effectively.
4. Working from a unified security and network model enables connectivity with the appropriate network context to avoid exposing the organization to attack vectors or compliance violations. This insight can either protect or expose vulnerability assets and prioritize exposed vulnerabilities that require immediate remediation.

Better protect your future

The ongoing evolution of your enterprise infrastructure is fast paced. In today’s highly digital world, policies must incorporate more contextual data to keep your networks protected. You need full visibility and context across your frameworks to understand the areas of your network that need safeguarding the most.

Skybox Network Security Policy Management suite enables you to create a more resilient security posture and increases efficiencies, so your hard-earned reputation remains intact. Our solution provides a collaborative environment necessary for your teams to manage the unpredictable challenges of enterprise security efficiently, with all the relevant context needed to make informed, proactive, security-aware decisions.

Learn how Skybox provides the context you need to stay better protected: Speak with an expert.

This blog was originally published on the Skybox website.