Enterprise networks are now no longer static, as they exist within on-premise data centers, multiple cloud platforms, and SaaS environments, as well as third-party integrations.
Situations change every day, which normally occurs through the development of applications, teams, and automated/pipeline processes, not necessarily through centrally managed networking teams.
Thus, employing policy-based automation is essential to modern network security. This allows enterprises to define their intended security posture once and automatically enforce that security posture continuously, regardless of how much the overall enterprise network continues to evolve.
Through this article, we will review the importance of policy-based automation for network security. Let’s see which those are:
How will policy-based automation allow organizations to mitigate the current challenges facing network security?
Why is network security a top priority for all IT leaders?
How is the discrepancy between established security policies and actual implementations growing?
The vast majority of enterprises in today’s world possess established security policies.
These policies, at a high level, contain information regarding access control, network segmentation, encryption, and compliance.
The issue, however, is not necessarily an absence of policy; rather, the problem lies in the inability to enforce policy consistently.
Typically, policy implementation at most companies occurs manually by way of either a firewall rule implementation, and device-specific access control lists.
During the course of time, the accumulation of changes produces confusion regarding the implementation of intended policies in network security as per Netpicker.
Scenarios that allow exceptions to the original policy have been added, thereby creating either an extremely high level of complexity or creating scenarios where “temporary” fixes were allowed to become “permanent” solutions in network security.
Additionally, given the rapid growth and evolution of enterprise networks, the gap between the organization’s intended policy versus actual configuration grows further apart from year to year as per Netpicker.
Why are manual security controls no longer scalable?
Manual security operations are completely dependent on the efforts of people and institutional experience/knowledge.
Engineers review configurations, change the configurations, and then validate that the change is compliant with the original policy.
This form of operation for network security will not scale based upon several factors.
- First, the number of changes that are required within the service-oriented environment continue to increase dramatically.
- Whereas a manual change may occur on an individual device once a month, modern environments are experiencing hundreds of changes in a given month.
- Second, as complexity increases, the potential for error associated with a manual process must also increase.
- Under stress, even very experienced engineers will make mistakes at some point in their careers. The time associated with manually validating compliance with the company policy is usually lengthy in network security.
- Therefore, if a configuration issue does occur, most organizations will have discovered the problem after the risk has already been introduced.
- For practical application, this realization creates a significant threat and risk to the IT leaders of an enterprise in today’s world as per Netpicker.
What actually is policy-based automation?
Automation based on policy starts with determining security intent and provides a high- level development path for such a way.
Rather than specifying commands for each device, teams define policies that state what services are allowed to communicate with each other, who can access sensitive systems, and how traffic is to be protected.
Policy-based automation systems translate policies into enforceable configurations across the entire network.
The key difference is policy remains constant while the infrastructure is impacted by constant change. New devices, workloads, and services automatically have the correct controls assigned to them.
Policy-based automation moves security from the reactive enforcement of security policies to the proactive governance of security policies.
What are the managing concerns regarding automation and control?
Some organizational leaders have been concerned that automation lessens the amount of human oversight.
In practice, automation based on policy actually enhances the level of control that an organization can enforce, not diminish it.
Policies are defined and approved by humans, and automation just enforces those policies consistently.
Most organizations will begin their policy-based automation efforts with monitoring and alerting and then progress into automated remediation. This staged approach builds trust and confidence as per Netpicker.
When properly implemented, automation will be viewed as a safety net vs. a risk element.
Let’s see the strategic importance of policy-based automation for IT leaders.
- For CIOs and CISOs, policy-based automation is no longer simply a technical advance; it is a strategic requirement.
- It supports risk management, regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, and business agility.
- As networks become increasingly dynamic, the cost of manual security will continue to rise, whereas the effectiveness of manual security will decrease proportionately.
- Organizations that invest in policy-based automation prepare themselves to scale securely and confidently.
To conclude, policies based on automation will provide organizations the framework to adapt as their network environments change. They will allow an organization to keep their security intent constant while allowing their infrastructure to be in constant change. To know more about network security, contact us at Netpicker!