The overall security of your network and applications is getting more and more of a hot topic. Especially for big organizations and governments, network security is vital but at the same time getting increasingly complex.
Security is not just the responsibility of a specific individual or department in an organization, but it is a shared responsibility of every person within the organization, including employees, contractors, and even customers.
Every individual should take appropriate measures to ensure the security of their personal and work-related information, such as creating strong passwords, keeping software up to date, being cautious of phishing scams, and reporting any suspicious activity or incidents.
Moreover, organizations should promote a culture of security awareness and provide training to employees on best practices to reduce the risk of security breaches. They should also implement robust security protocols, such as firewalls, encryption, and access controls, to safeguard sensitive information.
In short:
Protect your own data.
Protect your client’s data.
Don’t get hacked.
Stay safe from viruses.
Avoid unauthorized users.
Manage any other threat.
This means that you need to ensure that all your devices (physical and virtual) are running if possible on the latest OS, with the most recent patches, and following the best practices.
Not to speak about the fact that no maintenance of your security devices, because this can seriously slow down your network performance if there are too many rules on your firewalls.
Some organizations only take this seriously once they start getting issues. And then you are too late.
Speaking about this, there are some “simple” things you can do to stop this from the source. For example by better handling your Security Request process.
Take for example your Firewall requests.
Ensure that:
- You check the rules if they follow your standard procedures, for example, communication between zones, if rules are overly permissive
- Ensure that unused rules are removed over time or at least implement them with an expiry date and when to review them again.
- Avoid any duplicated rules to be added to your firewalls
- Let automation update the firewall rules based on approved requests and avoid any manual entry where possible.
- Ensure you can match any rule with an owner or requester and have this audited periodically.
Web proxy requests:
- Ensure that you review every new request and map them with common website classification: don’t allow classifications that can harm your organization.
- Consider only temporarily allowing access to websites and automatically removing the access once it expires.
- Ensure you can match any rule with an owner or requester and have this audited periodically.
Vulnerability Management
While maybe only 3% of findings would seriously harm your organization, you still need to stay on top of things.
- Scan your assets periodically and when doing this automatically, it can speed up the detection of any threat.
- Don’t limit yourself to just 1 scanning solution, but try to aggricate it as much as possible into 1 solution, by integrating all the data.
- Automatically assign these findings to an owner who can have deeper look and assign a plan of action to it.
- Follow the entire Vulnerability Management lifecycle to ensure things do get closed out and report on the status and progress.
Patch Management
Patch management is important because it helps ensure that software and systems remain secure and stable over time. A patch is a piece of software code that is designed to fix a vulnerability, bug, or other issue that has been identified in an application, operating system, or other software component.
By regularly applying patches to software and systems, organizations can prevent security breaches, data loss, and other types of cybersecurity incidents. Patches can address critical security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by cybercriminals to gain unauthorized access to systems or steal sensitive data.
In addition to security concerns, patches can also help fix bugs and performance issues that can impact the stability and reliability of software and systems. By staying up-to-date with patches, organizations can ensure that their systems are functioning as intended and avoid costly downtime and disruptions.
With our DNA solution, you can efficiently manage all these 4 topics from a single solution.
DNA does not only automate all your network, security, and infrastructure related to your specific processes, using a low code workflow designer, but you can also use it to manage your end client’s requests through forms, which can be customized to your needs.
Connect the forms directly to your network, to immediately run the required checks.
Implement the changes once they are approved using automation or manage your patch management & vulnerability management from a single platform, while still connected to your CMDB, CRM, or systems where needed.