ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
within your network may be the single-most
important security policy you adopt. After
all, if you can’t see it, you can’t secure it.
By tracking internal network use, you can
improve your situational awareness and see
what actions may be compromising your
network security. You can then move to
correct those actions before they turn into
something more serious.
3. KEEP A CLOSE EYE ON USER PERMISSIONS
While unintentional insider threats may be
the more widespread problem, intentional
ones — where authorised users attempt to
steal valuable data — can still cause major
damage. In many cases, these kinds of attacks
happen as a result of disgruntled employees
(or former employees) using their network
permissions to access sensitive information.
Most businesses have different levels of
privileged users but giving anyone access to
everything is a huge risk. Never allow any of
your users the authorisation to security logs
and be sure to provide and enforce network-
use guidelines for anyone with permission to
access network data. Also, be aware of the
dangers of BYOD and IoT devices connecting
to your network, as these devices can also
carry malicious programs or lead to data
being taken off premises.
4. USE A RELIABLE NETWORK PACKET
BROKER TO SEND THE RIGHT TRAFFIC TO
THE RIGHT TOOLS
When it comes to network security, we
sometimes err on the side of caution. For
example, even though certain tools are
designed to be more effective with certain
kinds of traffic, many organisations still
send all of their network traffic to all of their
security tools. Unfortunately, with network
speeds, data volume and the number of
business applications all increasing, security
tools are being pushed beyond the capacity
they are built to handle. This increases
cost while also slowing down business
applications leaving networks more open to
attack. A much better solution is to give your
20
security tools access to only the traffic they
need to analyse, while preventing access
to the traffic they don’t need to see. A next
generation network packet broker, purpose
built for security solutions, can provide traffic
intelligence features such as metadata,
application session filtering, SSL decryption,
masking and more to ensure that appropriate
traffic is being optimally routed to inline
and out-of-band security tools. This not only
improves network security, but also allows for
faster application and network performance.
5. STAY COMPLIANT
Your organisation isn’t the only one that
wants to keep your network safe from
intruders. Users have a vested interest in
ensuring that their sensitive data is kept out
of malicious hands and that means that the
government is likewise interested. Federal
and other government rules exist to help
ensure data security, and businesses and
other organisations are expected to comply.
Regulations (such as HIPAA, ISO and PCI
DSS) may seem like an extra hassle, but
they provide a number of reliable network
security best practices around policies and
procedures that can keep your customers
and your business, safe. If you want to keep
your network secure in 2019 and beyond,
don’t let your compliance slip.
6. ESTABLISH A SECURITY POLICY
Sometimes setting clear expectations
and guidelines for your employees can
mean the difference between secure and
unsecure networks. This will help network
users better recognise what is, and what
is not acceptable user behaviour. Perform
a network security risk analysis and
see what areas your policy most needs
to cover. Of course, guidelines are only
useful when employees internalise them.
Given the massive amounts of employee
onboarding most organisations put their
new hires through, it’s not surprising that
many employees fail to do more than
give network security policies more than