Security silos are like the old fortresses that were built to surround and protect its people and crown jewels of the kingdom from the constant threat of invaders. This approach to security defense might have worked in the past, but it is becoming less effective today as teams need cohesive access to data and policies. We now need a new approach to tackling network security: a centralized platform to unify siloed security policies that enable trusted and secure access.
With digital transformation and cloud environments, there is no longer a defined network perimeter on our modern enterprise networks – so how do we handle a layered security approach? Today’s endpoints are more mobile than ever and require a built-in Bring in Your Own Access (BYOA) strategy that gets managed in real-time. With advancements in mobility and the cloud, security policies must adapt quickly and often while allowing you to see all your devices from one place.
As companies continue to implement robust security policies across their devices, they must realize that these different security solutions can actually work against each other instead of complementing each other. This can create more problems than it solves. To avoid these problems, a centralized console to manage all your security policies becomes essential, thereby covering all the bases and keeping your company’s overall security posture intact.
The siloed security approach is where each product or solution has its own set of rules and processes to protect your network, users, applications, and data. This can often lead to confusion among IT teams trying to understand how these products work together, as each product might have its unique language for defending against threats. The biggest challenge with this approach is that there isn’t one single view of the problem: “if even one piece isn’t properly protected against a threat vector like DDos or a data breach such as WannaCry, your entire business is at risk.”
Firewall as a Defensive Measure
Firewalls act as the first line of defense for any security system. They’re supposed to protect your network from outside threats, but they don’t always succeed. For firewalls to be effective, they need to be part of a comprehensive security policy that is followed consistently throughout an organization. When everyone follows the same rules, it is more difficult for outsiders to exploit vulnerabilities.
The entire purpose of enterprise firewall management is to provide an integrated solution for visualizing and controlling all aspects of security for your entire organization. However, many companies fail at this because they don’t have one single software platform that supports all aspects of their network security infrastructure from end to end (or from edge to core).
The Right Firewall at the Right Place
There are different types of firewalls, and they all have different uses.
A Network Firewall protects an entire network from external attacks and intrusions, while a Perimeter Firewall protects an individual subnet or building on your network. A Host-based (or Endpoint) Firewall protects individual computers from malicious code or attacks. And a Web Application Firewall (WAF) protects the application layer.
The most effective way to design a firewall is by using multiple layers of defense. This means placing firewalls at strategic locations around the network perimeter and then placing host-based firewalls on every machine that needs protection. Finally, WAF will help you to protect your application by intelligently intercepting attacks so that they don’t make it to the end user of your applications.
Multi-Cloud Security with a Consistent Experience
Businesses are increasingly moving workloads to the cloud, but this trend is making it more difficult for security teams to protect applications and data. Cloud providers offer security services but often come with different interfaces and workflows. This makes it difficult for security teams to build consistent processes across all clouds.
As multi-cloud environments become more complex, security drift will become more common. Having a multi-cloud security management solution will help you visualize your security architecture in a new light, helping you make informed decisions around your security posture and build trust with the people who use your products.
According to Gartner, by 2024, 80% of critical infrastructure organizations will abandon their existing siloed security solutions providers by adopting hyper-converged solutions to bridge cyber-physical, and IT risks.
Having a unified security policy management system in place is beneficial for a number of reasons. Firstly, it allows you to control access to your applications based on users or groups of users and their roles within your organization, location, or other factors such as IP address range or user agent string. Additionally, centrally maintaining all activity logs helps with auditing so you can review who accessed what, when, and from where. Having this information readily available and centralized makes it much easier to identify potential security threats and investigate any incidents that may have occurred.
Limit Exposure without Limiting Innovation
AppVIewX automation workflows can help you manage multi-vendor firewalls with a centralized control center, therefore holistically improving the way you detect and block malware before it enters your network, which means you can focus on what’s important—high-touch engineering innovations.
The result? It helps you detect and block malicious payloads in real-time at speed far surpassing traditional firewall solutions. You can stay ahead of cybercrime even as hackers evolve their tactics.
TAKEAWAY:
1. Unified management of security policies
A unified orchestration platform that enables you to manage all your firewalls in one place is the key to protecting your applications
2. Alerts for suspicious activity
Having an inbuilt alert system for unauthorized access to your network or devices can help you mitigate the risk of expansive attacks before they happen
3. Automated workflows help protect you from costly mistakes
By unifying your security policy management and giving yourself the ability to create new policies from scratch or use existing modules, you’ll be well on your way to building a more intelligent and automated security system.
“Managing multi-vendor firewalls used to be a huge pain, but now there’s a way to do it without affecting the business’s ability to innovate at scale”
To learn more about how you can automate your WAF, drop us an email at [email protected]
About the Author
Tarshant Jain
Explorer & Hustler: ADC+
Helping network engineers and app teams simplify their application delivery with the power of automation, logic, and global wisdom.
