Firewall has detected a new network

If your firewall shows a notification that it has detected a new network, it means it is doing one of its fundamental jobs properly. But good network security does not stop with just detecting a new network.

 

You will have to analyze the network location, ensure it is authorized to connect with your network, automate this process, and ensure full-on monitoring so that none of the intrusive attempts ever go unnoticed.

A good amount of all these tasks can be made more efficient, accurate, and automated with the help of strong network security solutions.

What should you do if your firewall has detected an unrecognized network?

1. Analyze the incoming network request

• If the process is not automated, you might have to check for the incoming network request’s trustworthiness manually.
• You can check the security certificates associated with the request, check its source, validate with the right information whether this source can be trusted, and then decide whether to allow access.
• The best way to deal with any new network detection is to automate the authorization by using a strong network security policy that outlines what sources can be trusted, what cannot be trusted, and which decisions require further approval.

2. Analyze your network for any impact

• In case of an untrusted new network detection and possible intrusion, you should be able to check the impact or effect it has had on your current assets.
• You should analyze the entire system for performance, feature validation, and asset availability.
• A quick way to do this would be to use any network visualization product, such as Firewall Analyzer. This tool can also assess how your overall home network will be impacted by any possible security policy

3. Reassess your security policies and improve them

• In the event of any security incident, you will have to isolate your network, mitigate any impact caused by the intrusion and reset the system to a healthy state.
• And most importantly, you will have to investigate the incident, figure out the root cause, and fix it.
• This would require updating your security policies, risk management, and local network security settings.
• Following up on any security incident is highly recommended so that no unauthorized intrusion attempts go unnoticed and are handled appropriately. And like any other seemingly enormous task, this can be automated too.
• Check out firewall change management tools to help you implement continuous improvement within your network security management, contributing to network protection.

How to setup strong firewall protection

Here are some security measures and troubleshooting tips you need to employ to strengthen your Microsoft firewall management and network security.

1. Establish a strong network security policy management

• To implement a strong network security management framework, you must design the security policies, systems, and solutions as per your operating system.
• A network security policy framework can help you guide and streamline the security design and guide you with the enforcement of the same.
• As with any process, policy management should also be a continuously evolving framework and must be managed well to facilitate all the relevant tasks.
• Use intelligent systems like Algosec’s Algobot to help your firewall admins to carry out their tasks efficiently.
• And if you are looking to automate the security policy management tasks, you can also check out Fireflow. It helps you automate the security policy change process across the many phases of policy management, from planning to implementation and validation.

2. Visualize the network data

• Network monitoring is critical to enabling t strong firewall
• While AI-based alerting and monitoring systems could greatly help automate intrusion detection and notification, certain tasks require human supervision and deep analysis of the network logs.
• This way, you can not only analyze the network for any intrusion attempts (whether it be through malware sent through a web browser, file sharing, router, ethernet network adapter, or wi-fi) but also get to have a good understanding of your traffic and business trends.
• Appviz Firewall Analyzer from Algosec is a helpful tool for achieving this functionality.

3. Optimize your firewall configuration

• Firewall configurations include a broad range of activities that range from designing your firewall solution and choosing the right software/hardware to setting up the firewall rules and management processes.
• Set these configurations early on with all necessary considerations regarding your environment and applications.
• This process should also include the overall policy configurations and security rules that define the change process, firewall administration, monitoring, and management operations. Read this resourceful guide to learn more about firewall configuration, its challenges, and guidance on implementation.

4. Ensure cloud compliance

• Compliance and security go hand in hand in protecting your assets and boosting the overall goodwill and trust associated with your brand.
• Cloud compliance frameworks provide guidelines and cover most of the pain points of managing cloud security.
• Staying compliant with these guidelines means that your security is up to date and can be considered on par with the high standards set by these frameworks.

5. Micro-segmentation

• Micro-segmentation is a domain network security technique that helps you implement flexible security measures for individually segmented data center parts.
• It is most helpful with protecting your virtual machine implementations as it allows you to deploy specific security measures crafted to fit each virtual machine’s requirements.
• With security deployed on segmented workloads, your network becomes more resilient to attacks.

6. Perform regular firewall audits

• To ensure continuous compliance, you must conduct regular audit checks on the status of your firewall settings, policies, and implementations.
• Gather all the related documents and key information, review your current processes, firewall mechanisms, perform penetration tests, assess the security measures, and optimize as required.
• Perform a complete risk assessment on your Windows server and fix any issues that might be discovered as part of the audit process.

Tips and best practices for enhanced network security

1. Firewall for native cloud applications

• Make use of cloud-first prioritized firewall solutions to protect your native cloud applications.
• You need comprehensive visibility on all your cloud assets, ensuring advanced threat detection and protection.
• This requires a whole set of tools and security applications working together to provide a centralized security system.
• You will also have to ensure data compliance at all levels as well. You can try to employ native cloud solutions such as the extensive tools provided by Algosec.

2. Use centralized solutions

• Make use of centralized solutions to manage hybrid and multi-cloud applications so that you have all the important information accessible from a single platform.
• AlgoSec Cloud from Algosec is an amazing solution to achieve centralized visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud accounts and assets.

3. Follow the best security practices and guidelines

• Look into the best security practices and guidelines put forth by your cloud vendor and follow them to get the best out of the collective knowledge.
• You can also use vendor-specific firewall management solutions to help you deal with issues related to specific cloud accounts you might be using.
• Additionally, having an antivirus like Windows Defender and using a VPN also helps.
• A good practice to follow in case of uncertainty is to block by default. Any new network or source must be blocked unless specifically permitted by the user.
• Regarding access privileges, you can follow the principle of least privilege, where users are only granted as many privileges as would be required for their specific roles and responsibilities. 
• Use audit tools for regular auditing and keep improving on any vulnerabilities your firewall may have. 
• To increase the performance of your firewall applications, you can look into how you have set up your firewall rules and optimize them for better performance. Here are some more best practices you can follow when setting up your firewall rules:
  • Document all your rules and firewall configurations across all the devices. Make sure to document every new rule created and keep your documentation up to date. This can help security admins review the rules and optimize them as and when necessary. 
  • As mentioned earlier, follow a zero trust policy where you block traffic by default and permit network access only on a need basis. 
  • Monitor your firewall logs even when there is no particular security incident to investigate. Regular monitoring and analysis will give you a better understanding of your network traffic and can help you identify suspicious activities early on. 
  • Group the firewall rules to boost performance and avoid complications and loopholes. 
  • You can hire expert security administrators and security solutions such as Algosec to help review your firewall rules and keep them updated. 

Firewall management FAQs

What can a firewall do?

• A Windows firewall can be interpreted as similar to a literal wall.
• It blocks unwanted access to your system and lets you decide whether or not to allow any new network connection or access request.
• Similar to how a fort works, you only give access to access requests that you trust and block the rest. It is the first defensive setup you can set up for your network security.
• You can set a list of trusted sources, and the requests from these sources will be given automated access.
• The rest of the access requests from any other source, be it a third-party network, mobile devices, internet connection, or any other endpoint, can be blocked by your firewall. You can set up firewall rules that dictate which type of requests and sources can be trusted.
• A firewall can be implemented by using multiple methods. It can be a cloud app, hardware, software, virtualizations, an access-restricted private cloud, and more.

A typical firewall ruleset consists of the following specifications:

• Source address
• Source port
• Destination address
• Destination port 
• Information on whether to block or permit the traffic to the respective address and port criteria. 

A firewall can be implemented by using multiple methods. It can be a cloud app, hardware, software, virtualizations, an access-restricted private cloud, and more.

How does a firewall protect businesses from cyberthreats?

The obvious main use of the firewall is to restrict all kinds of unauthorized access, thus protecting your systems from cyberattacks. But it also has several other benefits, such as:

• Providing data privacy so your work network traffic is guarded from outside public networks.
• Restricting content access to your private network For instance, educational institutions can block inappropriate sites for their students while in class.
• Blocking unwanted traffic from ads, spam, and gaming sites.
• Ensuring data confidentiality and keeping you compliant with security standards.
• Monitoring all your incoming traffic, helping you analyze your network profile, and helping you gain insights into trending user behavior.
• Filtering out unwanted traffic and restricting access to certain websites.  
• Providing secure remote access through VPNs and similar remote access mechanisms. 

What are the most common types of firewalls?

Based on the way data is filtered through a firewall, it can be broadly classified into one of the following types:

• Packet filtering 
• Stateful inspection firewalls
• Circuit-level gateway firewalls
• Proxy firewalls
• Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs)
• Threat focused NGFWs
• Virtual firewalls
• Cloud-native firewalls