A network security policy delineates guidelines for computer network access, determines policy enforcement, and lays out the architecture of the organization’s network security environment and defines how the security policies are implemented throughout the network architecture.
Network security policies describes an organization’s security controls. It aims to keep malicious users out while also mitigating risky users within your organization. The initial stage to generate a policy is to understand what information and services are available, and to whom, what the potential is for damage, and what protections are already in place.
The security policy should define the policies that will be enforced – this is done by dictating a hierarchy of access permissions – granting users access to only what they need to do their work.
These policies need to be implemented in your organization written security policies and also in your IT infrastructure – your firewall and network controls’ security policies.
What is network security policy management?
Network security policy management refers to how your security policy is designed and enforced. It refers to how firewalls and other devices are managed.
Cyber Security Policies as Part of IT Security Policy
A good IT security policy contains the following essentials:
- Purpose
- Audience
- Information security objective
- Authority and access control policy – This includes your physical security policy
- Data classification
- Data support and operations
- Security awareness and behavior
- Responsibility, rights, and duties
A cyber security policy is part of your overall IT security. A cybersecurity policy defines acceptable cybersecurity procedures. Cybersecurity procedures explain the rules for how anyone with potential network access can access your corporate resources, whether they are in your physical offices, work remotely, or work in another company’s offices (for example, customers and suppliers), send data over networks. They also determine how organization’s manage security patches as part of their patch management policy.
A good cybersecurity policy includes the systems that your business is using to protect your critical information and are already in place, including firewalls. It should align with your network segmentation and micro-segmentation initiatives.
How AlgoSec helps you manage your network security policy?
Network policy management tools and solutions, such as the AlgoSec Security Management Solution, are available. Organizations use them to automate tasks, improving accuracy and saving time.
The AlgoSec Security Management Solution simplifies and automates network security policy management to make your enterprise more agile, more secure and more compliant – all the time.
AlgoSec is unique because it manages the entire lifecycle to ensure ongoing, secure connectivity for your business applications.
It automatically builds a network map of your entire hybrid network and can map and intelligently understand your network security policy across your hybrid and multi-vendor network estate. You can auto-discover application connectivity requirements, proactively analyze risk, rapidly plan and execute network security changes and securely decommission firewall rules – all with zero-touch and seamlessly orchestrated across your heterogeneous public or private cloud, and on-premise network environment.
Relevant Resources
Application-aware network security! Securing the business applications on your network
You’re constantly adding and removing applications on your network and managing associated connectivity, while faced with a constant barrage of cyber-attacks. Your security management efforts need to focus on what matters most – making sure that the business applications on your network run smoothly while remaining secure and compliant. With full visibility to your network’s application architecture, you can better understand how to secure your network environment and ensure business agility in the context of constant change management. In this technical webinar, Asher Benbenisty, Director of Product Marketing at AlgoSec, discusses how to identify business applications, discover their traffic flows, and apply this knowledge to enhance their network security and connectivity. Learn how to: Gain insight into your company’s security policy management maturity level Obtain true visibility into your application architecture environment Discover and map your business applications’ network connectivity flows Identify security risks and associate them to affected business applications Securely migrate business applications and security devices to new data centers
Avoiding the Security/Agility Tradeoff with Network Security Policy Automation
Business application deployments and changes require IT, networking and security teams to be more agile than ever before. But frequently, this agility comes at the expense of security and compliance and enables network breaches and cyber-attacks. In this webinar, Yitzy Tannenbaum, Product Marketing Manager at AlgoSec, will cover how network security policy automation helps you avoid this conflict. Join the webinar to learn how to: Plan for the entire network security lifecycle Discover your network topology and traffic flows Ensure continuous compliance and identify risks and compliance violations Easily implement changes across your hybrid network environment Mandate a consistent and unified change process
Examining the Security Policy Management Maturity Model
Does the following scenario sound familiar? Your network complexity is getting out of hand with too many firewalls, routers, switches, secure web gateways and more, as well as the related security policies. New network security devices with more granular and different types of controls have recently been or are being deployed in the network. At the same time the business is putting more demands on you to manage "ASAP" with requirements changing regularly. You don't have proper visibility of the security policies, compliance audits are a major burden, you can't keep up with all of the changes and you can't possibly know the impact of a security change or risk to a application that is critical to the business. If any or all of the above sounds familiar, you're not alone. Many enterprise networks are too complex, with numerous security devices and thousands of policies that must be managed across multiple vendors, different stakeholders and geographical locations. As new security technologies from different vendors are introduced into production environments, organizations not only have a maturity level in terms of what devices and capabilities are deployed, but also with regards to how the security policy is managed. From our work with more than 1000 enterprises from around the globe, we have been able to gain valuable insights used to craft the security policy management maturity model. This maturity model can help organizations recognize their current environment and to provide a roadmap for simplifying security policy management and gaining the crucial business perspective that is often lacking. I'm pleased to be joined on a webcast tomorrow with Eric Ogren of The Ogren Group, where we'll examine the security policy management maturity model and: Explore the challenges involved with managing the security policy such as understanding network topology and traffic flows, application connectivity requirements, risks in the policy, the purpose of each rule in the estate, and much more; Drill down into the benefits that can be achieved at each level; Offer recommendations for moving to a more automated and application-centric approach that involves security administrators, network operations, compliance officers, application owners and senior management. I hope to see you on the webcast tomorrow and get your feedback on the maturity model.
