The network compliance process has traditionally been periodic, with audits taking place once or twice per year, during which individuals gathered manual configuration data, corrected any apparent gaps, and moved on with their day.
While this was an acceptable method of ensuring compliance for years within most environments, the way enterprise networks operate today is different from just a few years ago.
For this reason, automating the network compliance process is becoming a top priority for most IT leaders because it allows organizations to have greater control while minimizing risk and allowing for greater flexibility within their businesses as per Netpicker.
In this article, we will discuss the following:
How has network compliance evolved over the years?
Why is it critical for organizations to automate their compliance process?
What steps are being taken by IT leaders as they address this change?
Why is network compliance becoming more complex?
The compliance requirements placed on organizations have increased dramatically over the past decade and continue to do so at an accelerating rate.
Compliance frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and various other regional data regulations will only increase the number of compliance requirements placed on a network.
In other words, as opposed to requiring an audit completion at a single point in time, auditors/regulators now require an organization to demonstrate the enforcement of controls always.
Numerous security incidents have demonstrated that the inability for an organization to demonstrate enforcement of controls continues to occur post-audit.
As cited in Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, misconfiguration of network devices is one of the primary reasons for security incidents across all industries.
Due to this change, IT leaders must rethink their compliance approach and the methods by which they maintain compliance moving forward.
Why manual compliance cannot scale?
Traditionally, compliance, due to its reliance on people, documentation, and periodic audits, was manageable within a small and static environment.
Today’s advanced network environments (e.g., cloud, data centers, edge) are large, dynamic, and growing continually; therefore, manual compliance practices introduce both a large challenge to maintaining compliance and create multiple opportunities for non-compliance as per Netpicker.
- The first limitation is that manual compliance practices simply do not scale. As an enterprise network continues to evolve through cloud, data center, and edge environments, configuration data must be collected and validated.
- Second, manual compliance practices are mostly reactive in nature; manual compliance issues are usually not identified until an audit is completed (or until an accidental disclosure event has occurred).
- Third, the ability to collect evidence becomes a bottleneck; engineers will usually spend many weeks preparing documentation consisting of screenshots, configuration files, and logs to satisfy the needs of an auditor.
What are the potential costs for non-compliance?
Generally when organizations think about compliance, financial penalties are the first thought that comes into their minds.
Although fines may be significant amounts of money, usually they are not the only costs incurred by a non-compliant organization.
Organizations that are non-compliant will incur additional costs in terms of operational disruptions, loss of customer loyalty, delays or inability to implement business initiatives, and increased regulatory scrutiny.
In highly regulated industries, organizations that repeatedly fail to be compliant are likely to no longer be able to operate as a business.
Automated network compliance will assist in reducing many of these additional costs or risks by providing an environment in which organizations can enforce risk management controls on a continual basis rather than intermittently as per Netpicker.
What actually is automated network compliance?
Though automated network compliance does not eliminate the role of human oversight, it utilizes technology to assess whether or not the various configuration settings within the network complies with specified policy requirements, as well as any regulations. Automated compliance achieves the following essential functions:
- Continuous assessment of network configured systems with respect to compliance baselines (e.g., a policy or regulation that describes the acceptable level of configuration accuracy).
- Immediate detection of all compliance deviations once they happen.
- Creation of a compliance evidence repository (for both regulatory and policy purposes) and report generation via automation.
Historically, compliance was often viewed as an isolated event rather than an integral part of the overall network operations process. By automating compliance assessment, it has become a continuous cycle.
Why is it critical for organizations to automate their compliance process?
Many IT managers are reluctant to adopt compliance automation because they believe that it will create an overly complicated or expensive solution or that they will lose control over the process.
While all of these concerns are legitimate, most represent an exaggerated perception of the reality involved.
Compliance automation technology has been developed to be easily integrated into existing infrastructure and processes.
Therefore, many companies will use compliance automation initially for monitoring/reporting purposes before incorporating enforcement capabilities at some point down the road as per Netpicker.
In addition, compliance automation will not replace human judgment or input; rather, compliance automation will allow for the timely delivery of accurate data in real-time.
Increasing the speed at which the organization can utilize and respond to information relevant to its business operations.
When executed properly, compliance automation solutions will reduce overall risk rather than add additional risk to an organization.
What steps are being taken by IT leaders as they address this change?
After defining compliance policies, organizations will then automate discovery and assessment to gather data on existing levels of compliance.
In the long term, organizations will implement their compliance check processes into both their change management processes and their monitoring processes.
Taking this systematic approach creates trust and confidence in the organization’s compliance systems, and allows them to be aligned to the organization’s business objectives.
To conclude, automated network compliance is not simply a functional improvement but provides a strategic direction to enhance governance and increase organizational resilience. Organizations that choose to use automated compliance will stay secure, compliant and competitive. To know more about network compliance, contact us at Netpicker!