AlgoSec’s Top 10 Blogs from 2019

A look back at the most-read AlgoSec blogs from the last twelve months

In a week we’ll be leaving 2019 behind and welcoming a new decade. Over the last twelve months, we’ve seen a range of cybersecurity challenges both new and old testing the limits of organizations’ IT and security teams.
We’ve aimed to help organizations to better understand those challenges via our blogs – so to summarize the past 12 months in security, it’s useful to look back at the 10 most-read AlgoSec blogs of the year.

1: Micro-segmentation: why thinking small means stronger network security
Taking top spot in our most popular blogs was a guest post from March 2019, written by our CTO, Prof. Avishai Wool. In the piece, Avishai discusses the value of micro-segmentation in terms of delivering both a stronger security posture and greater business agility while reiterating the importance of thorough planning and orchestration to ensure it is effective. He also explains the benefits of automation to eliminate time-consuming, error-prone manual security processes, such as connectivity discovery, mapping and ongoing management.

2: The state of cloud security after the Capital One breach
At number two on our list was a blog authored by Yitzy Tannenbaum in August 2019, which looked at how the Capital One breach highlighted the need to eliminate misconfigurations and understand the ‘shared responsibility’ cloud security model. In the post, Yitzy explored the details on the incident, which generated several high-profile articles including this one from our CMO, Jeffrey Starr. He drew a number of conclusions from the breach, arguing that it emphasized the need for centralized management and control over security to avoid the root cause of misconfiguration, and enable rapid response to any eventuality.

3: Security Incident Response on Steroids – AlgoSec and IBM Resilient
We’re proud to be working with several industry-leading organizations to enhance security management. In February we announced the launch of our AlgoSec Incident Response extension for IBM Resilient; a SOAR solution that facilities the handling of security incidents using multiple sources of information and automation. The extension connects to the AlgoSec server and automatically enriches new incidents with business and network context, giving analysts a 360-degree view of the situation from the Resilient interface.

4: Staying secure in the public cloud
In February we also published a blog detailing the outcomes from a panel discussion featuring AlgoSec CTO Prof. Avishai Wool and Scott Ward, AWS Principle Solutions Architect which centered around the question: “how should enterprises go about managing and maintaining a strong security and compliance posture as they move business applications to public clouds?” The discussion covered several topics including the increasing adoption of hybrid environments, the challenges in securing applications and data and the importance of automation to maintain security and compliance across these complex landscapes. You can watch the full session here.

5: How AlgoSec and SOAR tools help your SOC fly through alerts
Taking fifth place on our list was this June 2019 blog from Asher Benbenisty, which discussed the increasing trend for enterprises turning to a new category of security technology; security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) solutions to help manage the volume of security alerts, much like IBM Resilient as mentioned in point three.

6: How to stop small misconfigurations becoming big security problems
As we witnessed in the Capital One data breach, misconfigurations can become big security problems. That was the principle of this April 2019 blog from Yitzy, which discussed how a simple error in the change management process could open an organization up to a vulnerability that an attacker could exploit.
Yitzy went on to explain why automated processes matter, and how our security policy management solutions deliver end-to-end visibility and automation to minimize the risks of human error when planning and making changes.

7: That’s a wrap: Takeaways from Cisco Live! ‘19
Cisco Live! 2019 offered us a fantastic opportunity to see the company’s latest innovations in networking, security and the cloud. In this July blog, we recapped on the five-day event, which included more than 1000 conference sessions discussing the changing network environments and how enterprises are keeping businesses secure in an evolving IT landscape.

8: How to Avoid the BlueKeep Blues
In June 2019, I offered sage advice to organizations after one of the biggest vulnerabilities of the year was uncovered…
Reports suggested that BlueKeep affects an estimated 1 million machines worldwide, with many times this number within organizations’ internal networks. This means remote attackers could connect to a vulnerable server and execute arbitrary code on the machine.
We’re fully in support of the NSA’s call for organizations to invest time and resources in getting to know their networks and running supported operating systems. That is why we proactively check every proposed firewall rule change against the segmentation strategy to ensure it meets compliance and doesn’t introduce risk.

9: New A30 release strengthens SDN and cloud security management with enhanced Cisco ACI automation and application visibility
Making the list this year was one of our most exciting announcements for 2019; the launch of AlgoSec A30 in September 2019. This important release extends Cisco ACI automation and includes new AppViz and AppChange add-ons to give users unrivaled application visibility, network auto-discover and management capabilities. It enables teams to visualize network security zones and select risk profiles to support decision-making for both application owners and security managers.

10: Wow! AlgoSec named SC Labs Best Buy and AlgoSec AGAIN Scores Perfect 5 out of 5 Overall and in all 6 Categories in SC Magazine Review
Closing out our list of top blogs for 2019 is one of our proudest moments in October when AlgoSec was named SC Labs Best Buy and achieved a perfect score in all six categories in the SC Magazine review.
The review, which included three direct competitors amongst others, named AlgoSec as the ‘Pick of the litter’ proclaiming that “the functionality of AlgoSec’s highly intuitive chatbot, AlgoBot, coupled with the platform’s zero-touch automation/orchestration capabilities and competitive price point makes the AlgoSec Security Management Suite an SC Labs Best Buy.”

We are incredibly proud of the team’s achievements in 2019 and look forward to a successful and prosperous 2020.