Kick off the New Year with a Security Policy Clean Up

Complexity is commonly known as a security killer, yet oftentimes organizations find their firewalls inundated with rules that have added up over time. So as we get ready for the New Year, it’s a good time to take a step back and perform some security policy cleaning. The following tips will help you “cleanup” your corporate networks and data centers so that you can benefit from security without the complexity.

Tip 1: Make sure that your Firewalls have up-to-date application signatures

Are your application signatures current and tailored specifically for your infrastructure? If not, then application visibility and control may turn into next-generation blindness.

Tip 2: Align applications with your network security policy

Identify rules that can be tightened based on application and user/user group needs. For instance, if an application is only required by one group of users such as the marketing team requiring access to Facebook, then you should open that application to that specific group only and restrict it from all other groups.

Tip 3: Remove any unused rules

While cleaning up a cumbersome rule base may appear to be a daunting task, there are numerous automated tools available that can assist in the cleanup effort.

Tip 4: Continuously maintain a clean rulebase

If you’ve done all of the above then you should have a good start to the New Year, but security changes happen – a lot! So your cleanup is only good for a specific point in time.

The new year is a good reminder for us to do some security cleaning. And if you incorporate the above steps this time around, you won’t have to do this all over again next year.

Happy New Year!