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Learn how to move applications to the cloud seamlessly. Explore best practices for cloud migration, minimizing downtime, and optimizing your cloud environment Cloud migration: How to move applications to the cloud ------- ---- Select a size ----- Get the latest insights from the experts Choose a better way to manage your network

Webinars Tightening security posture with micro-segmentation Micro-segmentation protects your network by limiting the lateral movement of ransomware and other threats in your network. Yet successfully implementing a defense-in-depth strategy using micro-segmentation may be complicated. In this second webinar in a series of two webinars about ransomware, Yitzy Tannenbaum, Product Marketing Manager from AlgoSec and Jan Heijdra, Cisco Security Specialist, will provide a blueprint to implementing micro-segmentation using Cisco Secure Workload (formerly Cisco Tetration) and AlgoSec Network Security Policy Management. Join our live webinar to learn: Why micro-segmentation is critical to fighting ransomware Understand your business applications to create your micro-segmentation policy Validate your micro-segmentation policy is accurate Enforce these granular policies on workloads and summarized policies across your infrastructure Use risk and vulnerability analysis to tighten your workload and network security Identify and manage security risk and compliance in your micro-segmented environment January 27, 2021 Jan Heijdra Cisco Security Specialist Yitzy Tannenbaum Product Marketing Manager Relevant resources Micro-segmentation – from strategy to execution Keep Reading Defining & Enforcing a Micro-segmentation Strategy Read Document Building a Blueprint for a Successful Micro-segmentation Implementation Keep Reading Choose a better way to manage your network Choose a better way to manage your network Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

Best practices for network security governance in AWS and hybrid network environments Webinars Overcoming the Hybrid Cloud Policy Management Challenge: A Panel Discussion Visibility May 27, 2020 Omer Ganot Product Manager Yonatan Klein irector of Product Management Relevant resources State of cloud security: Concerns, challenges, and incidents Read Document Demystifying Network Security in Hybrid Cloud Environments Keep Reading A Pragmatic Approach to Network Security Across Your Hybrid Cloud Environment Keep Reading Choose a better way to manage your network Choose a better way to manage your network Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

AlgoSec leads in automating application connectivity and security policy management, essential for complex hybrid and multi-cloud networks AlgoSec Achieves Outperformer Status in GigaOm’s Cloud Network Security Radar Report AlgoSec leads in automating application connectivity and security policy management, essential for complex hybrid and multi-cloud networks February 15, 2024 Speak to one of our experts RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J., Feb 15, 2024 – Global cybersecurity leader AlgoSec has been named a Market Outperformer in GigaOm’s first cloud network security Radar Report, recognizing its position at the forefront of Cloud security innovation. The GigaOm Radar report highlights key cloud network security vendors to equip IT decision-makers with the information they need to select the best fit for their business. It measures selected vendors based on their execution and ability to innovate. In the report, Andrew Green, IT writer and practitioner, acknowledged several of AlgoSec’s distinguishing capabilities including Automation and Security Policy Management: “AlgoSec automates application connectivity and security policy across the hybrid network estate including public cloud, private cloud, containers, and on-premises networks.” Comprehensive Solution Suite : “AlgoSec delivers cloud network security solutions via its Firewall Analyzer, FireFlow, and AlgoSec Cloud products. AlgoSec Cloud provides application-based risk identification and security policy management across multi-cloud environments.” Real-Time Network Mapping : “A real-time network map provides a comprehensive view and connectivity flows of security and networking appliances such as firewalls, routers, and switches.” Other highlights from the report include infrastructure as code (IaC) security scanning capability, which produces “what-if” risks and vulnerability analysis scans within existing source control applications, and AlgoBot, an intelligent chatbot that assists with change management processes. Green said: “Network security policy managers have a distinct set of features, with particularly strong observability, misconfiguration, and simulation capabilities. These solutions are less invasive as they orchestrate only existing appliances without imposing architectural changes, and they can help enterprises reach the low-hanging fruit for improving their security posture. AlgoSec offers a range of innovative developments, including AlgoBot, which helps with change management processes, and the solution’s capabilities for planning and simulations.” “We are at the forefront of a pivotal shift within cloud network security”, said Eran Shiff, VP Product at AlgoSec. “To effectively address the needs of businesses working in a complex hybrid world, we are disregarding conventional norms and operating deep within the cloud application level. By understanding the business context and purpose of every application, we are enabling our customers to gain visibility, reduce overall risk and process hundreds of application changes with zero-touch across a hybrid network. Our inclusion in this report is a testament of this evolution and marks a new chapter in securing application connectivity.” AlgoSec is trusted by more than 1,800 of the world’s leading organizations including NCR Corporation, a leading global point-of-sale (POS) provider for restaurants, retailers, and banks and a provider of multi-vendor ATM software. Commenting on the partnership, Scott Theriault, Global Manager, Network Perimeter Security at NCR said: “As we aspire to achieve zero-trust, when moving into the cloud, micro-segmentation and container security come into play. Therefore, we need tools like AlgoSec to assist us in the journey because most application owners do not know what access is needed. This tool helps them learn what needs to be implemented to reduce the attack surface,” stated Theriault. About AlgoSec AlgoSec, a global cybersecurity leader, empowers organizations to secure application connectivity and cloud-native applications throughout their multi-cloud and hybrid network. Trusted by more than 1,800 of the world’s leading organizations, AlgoSec’s application-centric approach enables to securely accelerate business application deployment by centrally managing application connectivity and security policies across the public clouds, private clouds, containers, and on-premises networks. Using its unique vendor-agnostic deep algorithm for intelligent change management automation, AlgoSec enables acceleration of digital transformation projects, helps prevent business application downtime and substantially reduces manual work and exposure to security risks. AlgoSec’s policy management and CNAPP platforms provide a single source for visibility into security and compliance issues within cloud-native applications as well as across the hybrid network environment, to ensure ongoing adherence to internet security standards, industry, and internal regulations. Learn how AlgoSec enables application owners, information security experts, DevSecOps and cloud security teams to deploy business applications up to 10 times faster while maintaining security at www.algosec.com . About GigaOm GigaOm provides technical, operational, and business advice for strategic digital enterprise and business initiatives. Enterprise business leaders, CIOs, and technology organizations partner with GigaOm for practical, actionable, strategic, and visionary advice for modernizing and transforming their business. GigaOm’s advice empowers enterprises to successfully compete in an increasingly complicated business atmosphere that requires a solid understanding of constantly changing customer demands. GigaOm works directly with enterprises both inside and outside of the IT organization to apply proven research and methodologies designed to avoid pitfalls and roadblocks while balancing risk and innovation. Research methodologies include but are not limited to adoption and benchmarking surveys, use cases, interviews, ROI/TCO, market landscapes, strategic trends, and technical benchmarks. Our analysts possess 20+ years of experience advising a spectrum of clients from early adopters to mainstream enterprises. GigaOm’s perspective is that of the unbiased enterprise practitioner. Through this perspective, GigaOm connects with engaged and loyal subscribers on a deep and meaningful level.

Implement micro-segmentation effectively, from strategy to execution, to enhance security, minimize risks, and protect critical assets across your network. Micro-segmentation from strategy to execution Learn how to plan and execute your micro-segmentation project in AlgoSec’s guide. Overview Micro-segmentation is a technique to create secure zones in networks. It lets companies isolate workloads from one another and introduce tight controls over internal access to sensitive data. This makes network security more granular. Micro-segmentation is an “upgrade” to network segmentation. Companies have long relied on firewalls, VLANs, and access control lists (ACL) to segment their network. Network segmentation is a key defense-in-depth strategy, segregating and protecting company data and limiting attackers’ lateral movements. Consider a physical intruder who enters a gated community. Despite having breached the gate, the intruder cannot freely enter the houses in the community because, in addition to the outside gate, each house has locks on its door. Micro-segmentation takes this an additional step further – even if the intruder breaks into a house, the intruder cannot access all the rooms. What is Micro segmentation Organizations frequently implement micro-segmentation to block lateral movement. Two common types of lateral movements are insider threats and ransomware. Insider threats are employees or contractors gaining access to data that they are not authorized to access. Ransomware is a type of malware attack in which the attacker locks and encrypts the victim’s data and then demands a payment to unlock and decrypt the data. If an attacker takes over one desktop or one server in your estate and deploys malware, you want to reduce the “blast radius” and make sure that the malware can’t spread throughout the entire data center. And if you decide not to pay the ransom? Datto’s Global State of the Channel Ransomware Report informs us that: The cost of downtime is 23x greater than the average ransom requested in 2019. Downtime costs due to ransomware are up by 200% year-over-year. Why Micro-segment? With software-defined networks, such as Cisco ACI and VMware NSX, micro-segmentation can be achieved without deploying additional controls such as firewalls. Because the data center is software-driven, the fabric has built-in filtering capabilities. This means that you can introduce policy rules without adding new hardware. SDN solutions can filter flows both inside the data center (east-west traffic) and flows entering or exiting the data center (north-south traffic). The SDN technology supporting your data center eliminates many of the earlier barriers to micro-segmentation. Yet, although a software-defined fabric makes segmentation possible, there are still many challenges to making it a reality. The SDN Solution A good filtering policy has three requirements: 1 – Allows all business traffic The last thing you want is to write a micro-segmented policy and have it break necessary business communication, causing applications to stop functioning. 2 – Allows nothing else By default, all other traffic should be denied. 3 – Future-proof “More of the same” changes in the network environment shouldn’t break rules. If you write your policies too narrowly, then any change in the network, such as a new server or application, could cause something to stop working. Write with scalability in mind. How do organizations achieve these requirements? They need to know what the traffic flows are as well as what should be allowed and what should be denied. This is difficult because most traffic is undocumented. There is no clear record of the applications in the data center and what network flows they depend on. To get accurate information, you need to perform a “discovery” process. What is a Good Filtering Policy Micro-segmentation Blueprint Discovery You need to find out which traffic needs to be allowed and then you can decide what not to allow. Two common ways to implement a discovery process are traffic-based discovery and content-based discovery. Traffic-Based Discovery Traffic-based discovery is the process of understanding traffic flows: Observe the traffic that is traversing the data center, analyze it, and identify the intent of the flows by mapping them to the applications they support. You can collect the raw traffic with a traffic sniffer/network TAP or use a NetFlow feed. Content-based or Data-Based Approach In the content-based approach, you organize the data center systems into segments based on the sensitivity of the data they process. For example, an eCommerce application may process credit card information which is regulated by the PCI DSS standard. Therefore, you need to identify the servers supporting the eCommerce application and separate them in your filtering policy. Discovering traffic flows within a data center Micro-segmentation Blueprint Using NetFlow for Traffic Mapping The traffic source on which it is easiest to base application discovery is NetFlow. Most routers and switches can be configured to emit a NetFlow feed without requiring the deployment of agents throughout the data center. The flows in the NetFlow feed are clustered into business applications based on recurring IP addresses and correlations in time. For example, if an HTTPS connection from a client at 172.7.1.11 to 10.3.3.3 is observed at 10 AM, and a PostgreSQL connection from the same 10.3.3.3 to 10.1.1.1 is observed 0.5 seconds later, it’s clear that all three systems support a single application, which can be labeled with a name such as “Trading System”. 172.7.1.0/2410.3.3.3 TRADE SYS HTTPS10.3.3.3 TRADE SYS 10.1.1.11 DB TCP/543210.3.3.7 FOREX 10.1.1.11 DB TCP/5432 Identifying traffic flows in common, based on shared IP addresses NetFlow often produces thousands of “thin flow” records (one IP to another IP), even for a single application. In the example above, there may be a NetFlow record for every client desktop. It is important to aggregate them into “fat flows” (e.g., that allows all the clients in the 172.7.1.0/24 range). In addition to avoiding an explosion in the number of flows, aggregation also provides a higher-level understanding, as well as future-proofing the policies against fluctuations in IP address allocation. Using the discovery platform in the AlgoSec Security Management Suite to identify the flows in combination with information from your firewalls can help you decide where to put the boundaries of your segments and which policies to put in these filters. Micro-segmentation Blueprint Defining Logical Segments Once you have discovered the business applications whose traffic is traversing the data center (using traffic-based discovery) and have also identified the data sensitivity (using a content-based approach) you are well positioned to define your segments. Bear in mind that all the traffic that is confined to a segment is allowed. Traffic crossing between segments is blocked by default – and needs to be explicitly allowed by a policy rule. There are two potential starting points: Segregate the systems processing sensitive data into their own segments. You may have to do this anyway for regulatory reasons. Segregate networks connecting to client systems (desktops, laptops, wireless networks) into “human-zone” segments. Client systems are often the entry points of malware, and are always the source of malicious insider attacks. Then, place the remaining servers supporting each application, each in its own segment. Doing so will save you the need to write explicit policy rules to allow traffic that is internal to only one business application. Example segment within a data center Micro-segmentation Blueprint Creating the Filtering Policy Once the segments are defined, we need to write the policy. Traffic confined to a segment is automatically allowed so we don’t need to worry about it anymore. We just need to write policy for traffic crossing micro-segment boundaries. Eventually, the last rule on the policy must be a default-deny: “from anywhere to anywhere, with any service – DENY.” However, enforcing such a rule in the early days of the micro-segmentation project, before all the rest of the policy is written, risks breaking many applications’ communications. So start with a (totally insecure) default-allow rule until your policy is ready, and then switch to a default-deny on “D-Day” (“deny-day”). We’ll discuss D-Day shortly. What types of rules are we going to be writing? Cross segment flows – Allowing traffic between segments: e.g., Allow the eCommerce servers to access the credit-card Flows to/from outside the data center – e.g., allow employees in the finance department to connect to financial data within the data center from their machines in the human-zone, or allow access from the Internet to the front-end eCommerce web servers. Users outside the data center need to access data within the data center Micro-segmentation Blueprint Default Allow – with Logging To avoid major connectivity disruptions, start your micro-segmentation project gently. Instead of writing a “DENY” rule at the end of the policy, write an “ALLOW” rule – which is clearly insecure – but turn on logging for this ALLOW rule. This creates a log of all connections that match the default-allow rule. Initially you will receive many logs entries from the default-allow rule; your goal in the project is to eliminate them. To do this, you go over the applications you discovered earlier, write the policy rules that support each application’s cross-segment flows, and place them above the default-allow rule. This means that the traffic of each application you handle will no longer match the default-allow (it will match the new rules you wrote) – and the amount of default-allow logs will decrease. Keep adding rules, application by application, until the final allow rule is not generating any more logs. At that point, you reach the final milestone in the project: D-Day. Micro-segmentation Blueprint Preparing for “D-Day” Once logging generated by the default-allow rule ceases to indicate new flows that need to be added to your filtering policy, you can start preparing for “D-Day.” This is the day that you flip the switch and change the final rule from “default ALLOW” to “default DENY.” Once you do that, all the undiscovered traffic is going to be denied by the filtering fabric, and you will finally have a secured, micro-segmented, data center. This is a big deal! However, you should realize that D-Day is going to cause a big organizational change. From this day forward, every application developer whose application requires new traffic to cross the data center will need to ask for permission to allow this traffic; they will need to follow a process, which includes opening a change request, and then wait for the change to be implemented. The free-wheeling days are over. You need to prepare for D-Day. Consider steps such as: Get management buy-in Communicate the change across the organization Set a change control window Have “all hands on deck” on D-Day to quickly correct anything that may have been missed and causes applications to break Micro-segmentation Blueprint Change Requests & Compliance Notice that after D-Day, any change in application connectivity requires filing a “change request”. When the information security team is evaluating a change request – they need to check whether the request is in line with the “acceptable traffic” policy. A common method for managing policy at the high-level is to use a table, where each row represents a segment, and every column represents a segment. Each cell in the table lists all the services that are allowed from its “row” segment to its “column” segment. Keeping this table in a machine readable format, such an Excel spreadsheet, enables software systems to run a what-if risk-check that compares each change-request with the acceptable policy, and flags any discrepancies before the new rules are deployed. Such a what-if risk-check is also important for regulatory compliance. Regulations such as PCI and ISO27001 require organizations to define such a policy, and to compare themselves to it; demonstrating the policy is often part of the certification or audit. A Blueprint for Creating a Micro-segmentation Policy The AlgoSec Security Management Suite (ASMS) makes it easy to define and enforce your micro-segmentation strategy inside the data center, ensuring that it does not block critical business services and does meet compliance requirements. AlgoSec’s powerful AutoDiscovery capabilities help you understand the network flows in your organization. You can automatically connect the recognized traffic flows to the business applications that use them. Once the segments are established, AlgoSec seamlessly manages the network security policy across your entire hybrid network estate. AlgoSec proactively checks every proposed firewall rule change request against the segmentation strategy to ensure that the change doesn’t break the segmentation strategy, introduce risk, or violate compliance requirements. AlgoSec enforces micro-segmentation by: Generating a custom report on compliance enforced by the micro-segmentation policy Identifying unprotected network flows that do not cross any firewall and are not filtered for an application Automatically identifying changes that violate the micro-segmentation strategy Automatically implementing network security changes Automatically validating changes Security zones in AlgoSec’s AppViz Want to learn more? Get a personal demo Enabling Micro-segmentation with AlgoSec AlgoSec, a global cybersecurity leader, empowers organizations to secure application connectivity by automating connectivity flows and security policy, anywhere.  The AlgoSec platform enables the world’s most complex organizations to gain visibility, reduce risk and process changes at zero-touch across the hybrid network.   AlgoSec’s patented application-centric view of the hybrid network enables business owners, application owners, and information security professionals to talk the same language, so organizations can deliver business applications faster while achieving a heightened security posture.  Over 1,800 of the world’s leading organizations trust AlgoSec to help secure their most critical workloads across public cloud, private cloud, containers, and on-premises networks, while taking advantage of almost two decades of leadership in Network Security Policy Management.  See what securely accelerating your digital transformation, move-to-cloud, infrastructure modernization, or micro-segmentation initiatives looks like at www.algosec.com Want to learn more about how AlgoSec can help enable micro-segmentation? Schedule a demo. About AlgoSec Select a size Overview What is Micro segmentation Why Micro-segment? The SDN Solution What is a Good Filtering Policy A Blueprint for Creating a Micro-segmentation Policy Enabling Micro-segmentation with AlgoSec About AlgoSec Get the latest insights from the experts Choose a better way to manage your network

Untangling Network Complexity Exploring Network Segmentation Strategies and Security Solutions for Enhanced Network Security Network segmentation solution & software (risk mitigation) Yes, AlgoSec supports continuous compliance monitoring. As organizations adapt their security policies to meet emerging threats and address new vulnerabilities, they must constantly verify these changes against the compliance frameworks they subscribe to. Can AlgoSec be used for continuous compliance monitoring? Select a size Which network Get the latest insights from the experts Use these six best practices to simplify compliance and risk mitigation with the AlgoSec Copy White paper Learn how AlgoSec can help you pass PCI-DSS Audits and ensure Copy Solution overview See how this customer improved compliance readiness and risk Copy Case study Schedule time with one of our experts Schedule time with one of our experts Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

Enhance your network security with application segmentation solutions from Guardicore and AlgoSec, providing advanced visibility and control to protect critical assets. Application segmentation: Guardicore and AlgoSec ------- ---- Select a size ----- Get the latest insights from the experts Choose a better way to manage your network

The new alliance is designed to meet the growing needs of AlgoSec’s partners and customers to maintain their competitiveness by delivering enhanced services AlgoSec Teams with TD SYNNEX to Take Partner and Customer Service to New Heights The new alliance is designed to meet the growing needs of AlgoSec’s partners and customers to maintain their competitiveness by delivering enhanced services October 2, 2022 Speak to one of our experts RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J., October 3, 2022 – AlgoSec, a global cybersecurity leader in securing application connectivity, has announced its new alliance with TD SYNNEX, a leading global distributor and solutions aggregator for the IT ecosystem. This partnership will enable AlgoSec’s partners to leverage a whole host of customer-centric resources. These include extended partner support and key customer touchpoint services through TD SYNNEX’s expansive distribution channels. AlgoSec partners working through TD SYNNEX Security Solutions will benefit from: Expedited SLAs on all AlgoSec quotes and orders within less than one business day Quarter-end extended hours Access to a dedicated AlgoSec Product Manager from SYNNEX AlgoSec Partners will still have AlgoSec Channel Managers. In addition, AlgoSec customers will enjoy an enhanced service offering, including: Hands-on cybersecurity expertise through TD SYNNEX Cyber Range Dedicated security focused team Pre-sales engineering support Vulnerability assessments, Bill of Materials (BoM), design Proof of Concept (PoC) “We are excited to add AlgoSec to our portfolio of products. Securing applications and managing policy management across hybrid networks is a major challenge for IT teams.” said Scott Young, Sr. Vice President, Strategic Procurement, TD SYNNEX. Jim Fairweather, AlgoSec VP Channels adds “I am fully confident that our partnership with TD SYNNEX will enable our channel partners to accelerate time to market and improve overall support to meet customer demands”. About AlgoSec  AlgoSec, a global cybersecurity leader, empowers organizations to secure application connectivity by automating connectivity flows and security policy, anywhere.  The AlgoSec platform enables the world’s most complex organizations to gain visibility, reduce risk and process changes at zero-touch across the hybrid network.   AlgoSec’s patented application-centric view of the hybrid network enables business owners, application owners, and information security professionals to talk the same language, so organizations can deliver business applications faster while achieving a heightened security posture.  Over 1,800 of the world’s leading organizations trust AlgoSec to help secure their most critical workloads across public cloud, private cloud, containers, and on-premises networks, while taking advantage of almost two decades of leadership in Network Security Policy Management.  See what securely accelerating your digital transformation, move-to-cloud, infrastructure modernization, or micro-segmentation initiatives looks like at www.algosec.com About TD SYNNEX TD SYNNEX (NYSE: SNX) is a leading global distributor and solutions aggregator for the IT ecosystem. We’re an innovative partner helping more than 150,000 customers in 100+ countries to maximize the value of technology investments, demonstrate business outcomes and unlock growth opportunities. Headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, and Fremont, California, TD SYNNEX’ 22,000 co-workers are dedicated to uniting compelling IT products, services and solutions from 1,500+ best-in-class technology vendors. Our edge-to-cloud portfolio is anchored in some of the highest-growth technology segments including cloud, cybersecurity, big data/analytics, IoT, mobility and everything as a service. TD SYNNEX is committed to serving customers and communities, and we believe we can have a positive impact on our people and our planet, intentionally acting as a respected corporate citizen. We aspire to be a diverse and inclusive employer of choice for talent across the IT ecosystem. For more information, visit www.TDSYNNEX.com or follow us on Twitter , LinkedIn , Facebook and Instagram .

Get your application discovery and dependency mapping questions answered. Find clear explanations, best practices, and learn how to improve your understanding of your IT landscape. Application Discovery & Dependency Mapping Explained (FAQs) A network is the sum of its components, and if you want to ensure its functioning at the highest level, you need to be able to pinpoint every app that exists inside it. However, when the average company has 254 SaaS apps, identifying all the apps and dependencies that exist throughout an on-premise or cloud environment is easier said than done. Organizations cannot afford to rely on manual IP scanning to catalog or inventory each app their employees use every day; they need an AI-powered, automated, and scalable application discovery process. In this post we are going to examine what application discovery is, and how an automated dependency mapping tool can help. Introduction Application discovery is the process of identifying and creating an inventory of the apps installed and used throughout an environment. This not only includes apps used within on-premise servers, but also those in the cloud, in containers, and even on employees’ personal devices. Discovering applications is essential for IT administrators because it helps to set out a framework they can use to navigate the network and understand how different elements fit together. It also enables security teams to manage the performance and security of the business apps used by the organization. What is application discovery? A dependency mapping tool is essentially a tool that automatically maps apps and dependencies. A typical dependency mapping tool automates the discovery of applications within a network and provides a visual map to which an IT administrator can refer. Dependency mapping tools are a popular choice among IT teams because manually identifying and inventorying apps is a time-consuming process. What is a dependency mapping tool? Taking the time to map application dependencies, or investing in a tool that automates the process, pays dividends because it provides administrators with a heightened understanding of their organization’s IT environment. Greater visibility over how apps connect to each other reduces the amount of time it takes to conduct troubleshooting and root cause analysis, which means that disruptions can be resolved faster, limiting the overall operational impact of downtime. Dependency mapping also enhances change management, giving administrators the ability to identify the impact that changing the topology or composition of the network will have on critical services. At the same time, better knowledge of the IT environment makes it easier to spot inefficiencies and redundancies, giving insights into more cost-effective ways of structuring the network and decreasing resource consumption. As an added bonus, having a complete understanding of application topology decreases the risk of vulnerabilities in the network, and reduces the likelihood of data leakage and intrusions from unauthorized third parties. Organizations interested in mapping application dependencies at scale would be well-advised to incorporate an application dependency mapping tool so they do not have to manually poll apps from scratch. Key benefits of application dependency mapping AlgoSec AlgoSec is the industry-leading AI-powered application and connectivity management solution for mapping apps, security policies, and connectivity flows across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. As a solution, it is designed to enable network security operations teams to map and understand app and connectivity flows through their organization. This top-down, topological perspective allows users to identify business risks and remediate them ASAP. For example, an administrator can use the platform to identify obsolete traffic that could serve as a potential entry point for malicious traffic. At a high level, application discovery not only helps administrators keep up with topology changes in the network and reduce the risk of downtime, it also provides the visibility needed to simplify the management of firewall and SSL configurations. Features Discovery of applications and connectivity flows Real-time map of app connectivity requirements Impact assessment of topology changes on application connectivity , security and compliance Complete easy-to-use workflows for streamlining migration to a new data center or cloud environment Zero-touch change management and access rule recertification Use cases Create a real-time map of applications and connectivity flows to outline network topology. Use workflows to support users who migrate apps as part of the data center migration process. Before migration, assess and predict the impact of topology changes on application connectivity, performance and security. Automatically configure application security policies post-migration. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the AWS application discovery service AWS application discovery service is a common choice for migrating apps to an AWS environment. The AWS discovery service can automatically discover on-premise applications, and integrates with AWS Migration Hub to help migrate multiple applications at the same time. While this approach is useful for identifying applications in on-premise environments, unlike AlgoSec, it does not offer deep visibility into connectivity flows. It also offers limited support for cloud migration, lacking automated change management capabilities and migration workflows. Features The AWS application discovery service is designed to enable organizations to identify applications across AWS-powered cloud environments. The service includes the following features: Encrypt data in transit and at rest Create a snapshot of your on-premise application inventory Integrate discovery data with other AWS services, such as AWS Migration Hub and SMS Plan migrations for servers that share applications Connect applications to servers Group servers to migrate Mix agentless and agent-based approaches Use cases The main use case for AWS Application Discovery is discovering and creating an inventory of on-premise Information you can gather includes hostnames, IP addresses, MAC addresses and more. Map connections between applications and servers to create a visual representation of your network environment. Ingest utilization data to plan for your migration to the AWS Migration Hub. Microsoft Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment tool One of the next biggest alternatives to the AWS application discovery service is the Microsoft Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment tool. This solution enables users to automatically create an inventory of on-premise databases software, web apps, and SQL or AWS server instances. The Microsoft Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment tool also integrates with Azure Monitor ’s Application Insight, an application monitoring solution. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Oracle Cloud also offers its own migration tool designed to migrate on-premise applications and virtual machines from on-premise environments to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure using automated migration and provisioning. Oracle Cloud’s migration tool also offers templates, workflow automation and connectors for popular workloads including SQL Server, MySQL, Java, etc. Like Azure, Oracle Cloud also offers Application performance Monitoring integration. Application discovery in cloud environments Besides the top three cloud vendors, there are a number of other cloud security and SaaS-vendors offering application discovery capabilities. Some of these are listed below: Datadog Feature summary: Automated application and dependency mapping in real-time, alerts, latency graphs, and performance anomaly detection. Pros and cons: Rapid app and dependency mapping but beyond that lacks functionality for supporting cloud migrations. ManageEngine applications manager Feature summary: Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping (ADDM) with IP range application discovery, scheduled discoveries, scan summary reports, and a dependency map view. Pros and cons: IP range based discovery offers a broad view of apps and dependencies but does not offer migration workflows and change management capabilities. SolarWinds server & application monitor Feature summary: Polling to create application and dependency maps, tracking the response time of services, creating custom alerts for network latency, packet loss, and uptime monitoring. Pros and cons: Designed for monitoring application performance in on-premise environments, but it too lacks migration support. Other cloud providers and SaaS solutions One of the main challenges that organizations face when trying to discover applications in on-premise environments is reliance on outdated legacy monitoring tools. Manually discovering and mapping applications is inefficient, and offers limited visibility over configuration data and metrics across the environment. Application discovery tools such as AlgoSec’s tools enable security teams to discover application dependencies and connections throughout the environment that could easily be overlooked by relying on manual approaches alone. Automation also opens the door for an organization to leverage virtualization technologies from providers like VMware and Hyper-V, which unlock new cloud-native capabilities that cannot necessarily be replicated on-premises. Application discovery in on-premises environments How does AlgoSec help with application discovery and asset management? AlgoSec can help you to discover, identify, and map applications across your on-premise and cloud environments in real-time using AI, so you can keep an up-to-date perspective of your entire network. How does AlgoSec help optimize traffic flows and improve firewall performance? Deploying AlgoSec enables an organization to scan traffic flows and match them to applications within the environment. Once you discovered traffic flows, you can start to automatically optimize application flows and the maximum number of flows per application in order to optimize your firewall throughput and performance for end users. How does AlgoSec help enforce security and compliance across the data center? Increased transparency of application, traffic and firewall flows makes it easier for IT security teams to assess the effectiveness of security policies in the environment, and creates an audit trail that can be used to manage potential compliance violations. Enhanced visibility makes it easier to maintain compliance and to ensure that security controls are effective at protecting your critical data assets from compromise or misuse. For example, administrators can automatically identify compliance gaps and generate compliance reports to document the state of firewalls and surrounding infrastructure to comply with PCI, HIPAA, SOX, and NERC. How does AlgoSec help with business continuity and disaster recovery? AlgoSec helps your organization to maintain business continuity not only through proactive network security policy management, but also by simplifying the process of migrating application connectivity flows and firewall policies to the cloud and ensuring compliance. Migrating your apps and data to a secondary site ensures that if your primary site is affected by a power outage or natural disaster, you will still be able to access critical information. Furthermore, according to an EMA survey, network security policy management also enhances business continuity by helping organizations to enforce more consistent security policies, conduct more proactive disaster recovery testing, and limit the number of change-related outages. How does AlgoSec help with data center migration? AlgoSec can help you to migrate your data center by discovering and mapping applications and connectivity flows, and connecting them to the relevant policies. Once these are discovered, the solution can migrate them to a new on-premise installation or cloud platform, while automatically identifying and removing obsolete and redundant firewall rules. This reduces the amount of overall manual processes associated with the migration. How does AlgoSec help with cloud cost optimization? AlgoSec’s application discovery and mapping capabilities help your organization to optimize costs in the cloud by giving you a reference point to conduct application performance monitoring and ensure that your cloud bandwidth is used efficiently. This ensures that you are getting the maximum throughput from your network infrastructure and are not being held back by outages or other application performance issues. What are ADDM solutions and their advantages? Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping (ADDM) is a category of software solutions that can map applications and dependencies to help human users understand how they connect together and interact. ADDM solutions are a popular choice for IT administrators because they enable users to identify and map dependencies automatically rather than spending a substantial amount of time locating them manually. How does application performance monitoring work? Application performance monitoring is where an organization monitors performance metrics from applications located throughout their environment. Monitoring application performance helps to generate insights into how to optimize system availability, performance and response time. It also helps to ensure that end users enjoy a solid user experience with minimal downtime. What are some common application discovery methods? There are a number of common application discovery methods that organizations can deploy. These include: Sweep and poll – A technique for discovering IT assets whereby a system pings IP addresses and identifies the devices that issue a response. Network monitoring – Monitoring real-time packet information to generate data on application dependencies. This can be done at the packet level by capturing packets or at the flow level with NetFlow. Agent on Server – A process for identifying applications that uses a software agent deployed to a server to conduct real-time monitoring of incoming and outgoing traffic in order to map dependencies. Orchestration-Level Discovery – Where an organization uses an orchestration platform like AlgoSec to discover applications and dependencies automatically without having to deploy agents to servers. What is the role of DevOps in application discovery? Application discovery plays an important role in the DevOps process because it enables development teams to work toward automated app deployment. Automating the discovery of apps and connectivity flows means that users do not need coding knowledge to understand the environment. Increased visibility also supports a DevSecOps strategy, offering security teams greater transparency over application components. For example, a security analyst can view apps and connected dependencies and get a clear perspective of the entire attack surface and potential vulnerabilities a hacker could exploit. What is the role of application discovery in cloud migration? Discovering applications and dependencies helps you to fast-track your cloud migration by identifying what components you need to move and allowing you to phase the deployment in steps. FAQs Gaining visibility over applications in your environment is a critical step on your journey toward enhancing your business agility and continuity and minimizing downtime. A better understanding of app topology helps administrators find risks and remediate them quickly to ensure ongoing compliance. If you cannot see how effectively your applications are being delivered, or how they perform, then there is no way to consistently optimize performance or enforce security policies. While manually developing an inventory of apps and dependencies is a time-consuming process, the AlgoSec platform can completely eliminate the need for this by discovering apps in real-time so you can see how these components connect to each other on-premise, and across the private or public cloud. Real-time visibility over apps gives you everything you need to manage performance, risk, and compliance challenges at enterprise pace. Take control of your network Select a size Introduction What is application discovery? What is a dependency mapping tool? Key benefits of application dependency mapping Application discovery in cloud environments Other cloud providers and SaaS solutions Application discovery in on-premises environments FAQs Take control of your network Get the latest insights from the experts Use these six best practices to simplify compliance and risk mitigation with the AlgoSec platform White paper Learn how AlgoSec can help you pass PCI-DSS Audits and ensure Solution overview Learn how AlgoSec can help you pass PCI-DSS Audits and ensure Solution overview Choose a better way to manage your network

Discover everything you need to know about Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) solutions, including their benefits, features, and how they streamline security operations. Everything you need to know about NSPM solutions | AlgoSec In this IT Central Station Peer Paper, learn the key factors driving selection of Network Security Policy Management solutions based on actual user feedback. Overview Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) solution selection factors need to align with business needs. Security shouldn’t be a barrier to the business, but frequently, security needs are shortchanged to ensure business agility. Ideally, this tradeoff should not exist. Network and security managers thus look for NSPM solutions that can make the business run better by efficiently automating network security policy management, improving visibility in network traffic and rules, and facilitating compliance. This paper offers insights and feedback from real users, who discuss what went into their NSPM selection process. Abstract What constitutes a good Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) solution? Selection criteria relate to Information Technology (IT) and security, but both tie into the business. The technical qualities of an NSPM solution should support existing business processes and help the business move forward. Security should not get in the way of business agility. Indeed, business and IT stakeholders are increasingly recognizing that security risks have a clear financial impact on your business – from reputational damage, to lost business and lower corporate valuations. Breaches are costly and time-consuming to remediate. The loss from a data breach or outage is real. The right NSPM solution enables the business to achieve its strategic and operational goals while cost-effectively mitigating risk. In this paper, enterprise IT professionals discuss how the right NSPM solution addresses such challenges through greater visibility into the network, policy automation and compliance. Their insights come from reviews of the AlgoSec NSPM solution, published on IT Central Station. Introduction Network security managers face pressure on multiple fronts. They’re dealing with increased network complexity. There are growing global compliance requirements and rules to track. The network itself now spans on-premises, public clouds, private clouds and everything in between. At the same time, the business wants to accelerate time-to-market, increase agility, produce more innovative applications and on and on—all without suffering a data breach or outage. Aligning security with businesses requirements in NSPM requires automation. Old, manual processes that rely on Visio and Excel are unable to keep up with the pace of business changes. The new generation of NSPM solutions gives network security managers and network administrators the tools they need to deliver what the business wants—without overspending or stretching network operations teams beyond reason. They do this by unifying visibility, policy automation, and compliance. All of this is happening in a complex environment. To stay secure and agile, the business needs its NSPM solution to automate the policy change process, conduct continuous network analysis, and monitor the network across the cloud and on-premises data center. Figure 1 depicts some of the elements the NSPM solution must interact with to realize such functions. Figure 1: NSPM solutions must provide visibility and automation for a wide range of network hardware, software and functional areas—on top of physical networks, private clouds frequently running software-defined networks (SDNs), and public cloud infrastructure. The continuing evolution of NSPM There is no NSPM solution that satisfies all needs. Every organization has different technical and business requirements and security cultures. Solutions have to fit the network, business strategies, and existing business processes. However, when evaluating an NSPM solution, there are four critical issues: Dealing with misconfigurations – Manual processes frequently lead to misconfigurations. According to industry data, nearly all firewall breaches are caused by misconfigurations, not flaws. Automating previously-manual processes results in fewer mistakes and misconfigurations. Automation as a strategy – Network policy automation is not an end unto itself. Rather, it supports the business strategy like maintaining security, ensuring SLAs, increasing cooperation and reducing friction between departments. It improves competitive differentiation through better customer engagement, e.g., by moving applications to the cloud. Network policy automation aids regulatory compliance, and frees IT time from housekeeping so it can be applied to digital transformation and supporting strategic initiatives. Understanding visibility requirements – Powerful NSPM tools give network admins and security managers new depths of visibility into both network devices and business applications. By understanding their traffic flows across multi-vendor and hybrid devices, they can plug security holes, troubleshoot more easily, and discover applications and services. Compliance requirements – Meeting an audit requirement often consumes all the IT department’s resources as they focus on auditing. Organizations need to determine their regulatory compliance requirements, decide how much time they want to spend preparing for audits, and figure out how important continuous compliance is to them. They need to make sure that new changes do not violate internal or regulatory compliance requirements. Challenges inherent in selecting an NSPM solution Members of IT Central Station, an industry site that features candid discussions and peer-to-peer user reviews from enterprise technology professionals, weighed numerous factors in their processes of selecting an NSPM solution. As they described in reviews of AlgoSec, a key consideration was the alignment of network security with business objectives. Their assessments touched on a wide variety of issues. These included the solution’s ability to reduce misconfigurations during the process of digital transformation when assets move some of their data to the cloud and organizations embrace hybrid networks. NSPM user reviews also discussed the efficiency of network management operations and team performance. Visibility and automation were significant factors affecting selection of an NSPM solution. Users want visibility into the network, traffic, and applications. They want to see what is happening with rules and applications while also monitoring policy changes. Regarding automation, what mattered to users was the ability to automate rules management, as well as configuration and change management. “Zero-touch” automation was considered useful, as was the ability to automate a multi-vendor environment. Compliance is the other main driver of NSPM selection. Users rely on their solutions to facilitate compliance, including reporting. These needs include ensuring a state of continuous compliance as well as ensuring and demonstrating audit-ready regulatory compliance for major regulations such as PCI DSS, GDPR, and SOX. Users also have to ensure and demonstrate audit readiness for internal compliance requirements. Get a Demo NSPM solution selection factors Policies governing the network are inherently business-facing. Even when they address entirely technical matters, a business objective is ultimately driving the policy process. For example, an IP network expert at a comms service provider with more than 200 employees described the value of AlgoSec by commenting, “It provides faster go to market with fewer resources. In one system, users can request access through the firewall for business services, which can be approved by the appropriate team and can be implemented automatically by the system itself.” IT Central Station members spoke to the need to align network security with business objectives. An AlgoSec user at an energy/utilities company with over 10,000 employees remarked, “With AlgoSec, we can show a view of firewall compliance that is clean and easy to read and present. This also helps our business units ensure their policies are clean. With that data, we can show management that the firewalls connected to our network, but owned by other business units, meet our standards.” A network engineer at a tech services company with over 10,000 employees, shared that AlgoSec “helps us deploy new business applications quickly and securely. It ties cyber threats directly to critical business processes.” Enabling digital transformation and cloud migrations As network managers and security teams grapple with digital transformation and cloud initiatives, they want an NSPM solution that will facilitate the process. As an AlgoSec user put it, “We see the value… for organizations involved in digital transformation projects migrating to public/ private/hybrid cloud models.” A director of information security operations at a consumer products company with over 1,000 employees, similarly shared that AlgoSec helped him with cloud support , spanning both native and hybrid environments. Optimizing team performance Network operations and security managers are keenly aware of team performance and its impact on the broader business. Budget-cutting pressure is relentless, while skills shortages potentially hamper effective operations. SLAs are a constant pressure. At the same time, the faster the team, the more agile the business. For these reasons, users view team performance optimization as a selection factor for an NSPM solution. For instance, an IT technical consultant at a manufacturing company with over 10,000 employees said that AlgoSec FireFlow “increases business efficiency and helps avoid bottlenecks in our NOC [Network Operations Center] team.” A security engineer at a financial services firm with more than 500 employees had a similar experience. He said, “Since we deployed AlgoSec, we have been able to assign more of our time to what really matters . It now takes less than half of the time it took before we had this tool to deploy the flows requested by the business.” Previously, this had been a “very painful job,” as he put it. “Now,” he added, “We just put the source and destination into the AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer and most of the job for the flows is done.” Another AlgoSec user found that the solution let him “increase the effectiveness of the team, allowing them to prioritize more complex and business-critical tasks in a faster manner.” Network security policy as a business issue Being able to align network security with business priorities depends on seeing what’s happening across the network as well as within its policies and rules. A manager of network service delivery at a financial services firm with over 10,000 employees summed up the issue when he said, “It is worth spending the cost for visibility on security .” A security engineer at a manufacturing company with over 1,000 employees, echoed this sentiment, commenting, “I think we have a great ROI due to the improved visibility and management that the solution now provides us.” Visibility into network and traffic The network itself is the starting point of business-oriented NSPM. Network managers must see how traffic and network policies affect the network and their applications. Without the right tooling, however, much of the network can remain hidden. To this point, an AlgoSec user at a company with over 10,000 employees said, “I use this solution to have full visibility of the network , to simulate traffic queries, and to generate security reports according to the security policies of my company. The most valuable features are the network map, which provides the full visibility of the network, and the security reports.” Another AlgoSec user spoke about the benefits of the network map, saying, it was “a very good thing to get a clear view of every single region in your network.” A lead security infrastructure consultant at a financial services firm with over 10,000 employees, added: “We also use AlgoSec to get better visibility into our traffic flows , to optimize our firewalls rules, and to analyze risks.” An AlgoSec user at a company with over 10,000 employees noted, “This solution provides visibility and comprehension of the network in our organization. It assists us in network security reviews and audits. In the end, a lot of time, we add context and build a security matrix matching our own standards.” A senior technical and integration designer at a retailer with over 10,000 employees further remarked that “AlgoSec provided a much easier way to process FCRs [Firewall Change Requests] and get visibility into traffic .” He contrasted this capability with his experience with previous vendors, a situation where, as he said, “we had to guess what was going on with our traffic and we were not able to act accordingly.” Get a Demo Visibility into applications Network managers need to understand the impact of policy changes on business-critical network applications. Security policies affect application migrations as well as initiatives to establish network segmentation. In this sense, visibility into applications on the network is essential for aligning network security policy with business objectives. The network engineer addressed the issue by stating, “It [AlgoSec] automatically discovers applications and their connectivity flows, then associates connectivity with their underlying firewall rules.” For a system architect at a school with more than 500 employees, the benefit came from the solution’s traffic simulation query. In his case, this “helps to understand which rules match or don’t match for a specific traffic pattern, helping troubleshoot application issues .” “I have found the firewall optimization feature to be very valuable because most developers don’t know the ports or services their applications are running ,” said an AlgoSec user. He then added, “After running the rules on any services for a short while, AlgoSec helps get the right service ports and IP addresses.” A network manager at a financial services firm with over 1,000 employees felt that AlgoSec has enabled his team to analyze rules to check access for an application or user. He related, “Breaking down a rule to specify used objects within groups and protocols used has proved invaluable for us to narrow exposure to potential threats.” Visibility into rules NSPM users want visibility into rules. According to an AlgoSec user, the solution “provides great visibility into your firewall rules , thereby allowing you to eliminate redundant or overlapping rules.” In particular, visibility into rules saved time by allowing his administrators to test network traffic and pinpoint which rules were being triggered for a particular traffic flow. A technical presales engineer at a tech services company with more than 500 employees, described the value of AlgoSec’s policy tightening feature, which gave him visibility into ‘any to any’ rules. The tool could tell him which sources and destinations were used as well as the actual traffic from overly permissive rules . From this, he said, “We are able to tighten the policy of the firewall.” Visibility into changes Policy changes are a potential source of risk exposure, especially in a large organization where team members may not be aware of others’ actions. IT Central Station members highlighted this capability in their assessments of NSPM solutions. “Now, we can easily track the changes in policies,” said a network security engineer at a financial services firm with over 10,000 employees. “With every change, AlgoSec automatically sends an email to the IT audit team. It increases our visibility of changes in every policy.” “The compliance module provides full visibility of the risk required in firewall change requests ,” said the manager of network service delivery. An AlgoSec user at a company with over 10,000 employees felt that “AlgoSec also allows us to have a history of changes .” He believed the history was especially useful in the event of an outage or an unwanted change. For another AlgoSec user, “Policy optimization, visibility, and a faster change management process has reduced unnecessary times required for manually changing processes. The resources are now utilized more effectively for other areas.” Visibility IT Central Station members stressed the importance of automation capabilities in selecting an NSPM solution. Reliance on manual processes is unsustainable. Experience shows that manual policy management leads to mistakes, misconfigurations, and missed SLAs. As the IT technical consultant pointed out, with AlgoSec, “we have eliminated any human mistakes that we have dealt with in the past and now we want to avoid as we are moving toward a completely automated network.” Manual processes negatively affect agility as well. The issue is particularly salient today, as companies expect network operations to be as lean as possible. Automated rules management AlgoSec users are putting the solution to work in automating rules management. A network and security engineer said, “We are also using AlgoSec to automate machine provisioning (creation of new rules associated with that machine) and machine decommissioning (removal of rules associated with that machine).” This capability is viewed as a positive attribute in an NSPM solution. According to an AlgoSec user, “We are currently in a rule base performance improvement process and AlgoSec is an invaluable tool to accomplish this. Furthermore, we are starting rule creation automation , which will also provide some relief on our workload.” Other notable comments about rule management automation include: “My organization has used Firewall Analyzer for many years to simplify and automate rule set management across an estate of hundreds of Check Point firewalls. Key functionality provided covers compliance reporting and identification of duplicate and unused, as well as risky rules.” – Security consultant at a financial services firm with over 1,000 employees “We recently moved our data center to a new location, and we migrated our firewalls from one vendor to a different vendor. AlgoSec helped us tremendously to clean up shadow rules , unused objects even before moving to a new vendor.” – AlgoSec user at a healthcare company with over 1,000 employees “Our primary use case is to clean up firewall rules of migration from Cisco ASA to another firewall vendor. We try to get rid of old rules and get these converted into new rules which apply better to our environment.” – AlgoSec User Automated configuration and change management Being able to automate configuration and change management saves time. As a result, it’s a driver of preference for NSPM solutions. “Automated change notification is a must and is critical in maintaining a safe environment and compliance,” said an AlgoSec user. An information security specialist at a company with over 10,000 employees also spoke to this benefit of AlgoSec when he said, “The best feature for us is the ability to automate the change requests that come through our service desk, which is done via the tool’s intelligence to analyze the conditional rules.” In his case, as he put it, “This used to be a big time sink for the guys which is now less of an issue. This means that the company can claim back valuable man-hours for other means (also showing a labor cost saving to the board).” Zero-touch automation To achieve the productivity gains desired by network security and operations managers, an NSPM solution should enable automation with as few hours as possible. The network engineer acknowledged AlgoSec in this regard, saying, “AlgoSec delivers a rich set of change management workflows and enables zero-touch change processes if no risks are identified.” A global network security engineer similarly noted, “Initial deployment was straightforward . The FireFlow workflow can be configured to match the existing flow – customizing this to match any workflow permutations takes the most time.” Automating the multi-vendor environment Network security and operations environments are often multi-vendor in nature. They invariably have to support firewalls from Check Point, Fortinet, and Palo Alto as well as a host of other technologies, as shown in Figure 2. For this reason, users prefer NSPM solutions that work well with more than one vendor platform. An IT Security Engineer III at a software company with over 10,000 employees, shared how he had previously spent time manually looking through rule bases trying to find risk rules. “Now we see it via AlgoSec,” he said, adding, “It also helps because we see those risks across multiple vendors .” This reduced the potential for error, in his view. A senior consultant at a consultancy said, “We use this solution for the management of firewalls on a client with a multi-vendor landscape .” An AlgoSec user at an energy/utilities company with over 1,000 employees valued AlgoSec’s “ability to manage multiple vendor firewall policies and traditional firewalls with an intelligent way to prevent cyberattacks and reduce outages.” The AlgoSec user at the energy/utilities company further noted, “We are moving towards an automated environment so the ability to work with Ansible, ServiceNow, and Palo Alto gives us the ability to automate our firewall policy creation. And it does so in a manner where we do not have to worry about a policy being created that may put our organization at risk.” Figure 2: Some of the platforms and technologies with which an NSPM solution should integrate Automation An NSPM solution must make it easier to enforce the network-level policies required for compliance with government regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and PCI DSS, than is possible without the solution. NSPM should also make it simpler to bring the network into compliance with internal-facing security policies and rules, e.g., “Routers may not be set to factory defaults.” These expectations are increasingly relevant as organizations adopt continuous compliance—no longer treating audits as a point-in-time exercise but rather working to adhere to policies and controls and continually maintaining compliance, even during frequent and extensive network changes. For example, a security consultant in a financial services firm with over 1,000 employees said, “Compliance and risk reporting are the most valuable features of the product.” A Global Network Solution Architect at AXA, an insurance company with over 10,000 employees, used AlgoSec for firewall rules compliance with global security policies. He relied on the solution “to ensure global policies are applied to all regional firewalls, provide auditing and compliance.” Firewall compliance Network managers need to demonstrate that their firewalls comply with policies established to meet the audit requirements of regulations like SOX and HIPAA. This is a familiar aspect of network management and security, but one that gets revisited regularly as users try to make the process more efficient. In this context, the Prudential manager of network service delivery stated, “The compliance module is one of the best features which can help anyone to perform security review with predefined security matrix configurations. The compliance module can save a lot of time for security reviews and provide full visibility of the risk required in firewall change requests.” The security engineer said, “It’s a great tool when preparing for audits and ensuring your firewalls are in compliance .” Regulatory compliance Companies that are obligated to comply with government regulations benefit from automated policy management. The network engineer, for example, found that using an NSPM solution reduced his audit preparation efforts and costs drastically while enabling his team to maintain continuous compliance. An AlgoSec user also felt the solution helped in maintaining and providing regulatory compliance metrics and optimizing the overall security of the organization. The PCI DSS compliance standard, required for companies that process credit card transactions, emerged as a frequent use case for NSPM: “The baseline of in-built policies such as PCI DSS helps us maintain good security ratings in compliance with regulatory standards.” – Security operations manager at a financial services firm with more than 200 employees “I work at a multi-vendor firewall environment. AlgoSec is primarily used to see what firewall policies are in place, as well as PCI compliance ” – Senior firewall engineer at a tech consulting company with over 1,000 employees “It is very useful for PCI DSS compliance .” – Presales manager at a small company Internal Compliance IT Central Station members discussed their internal compliance needs as well. The network manager placed this issue into context by saying, “The risk and compliance area is key to ensuring we conform to company regulations . Having a number of compliance options to baseline ensures that we get the basics right before looking at advanced risks and remediation.” Addressing this point, the security engineer said, “We also need the audit report and risk assessment features to send to our InfoSec team so that they can use it in our audit documentation . This is also very important because it significantly reduces our workload and makes it very easy to have the documentation ready to show to our auditors.” The network and security engineer was pleased that AlgoSec enabled his team to provide reports to auditors “without losing a single day from the network support department.” He said, “We simply provide AlgoSec reports and analysis.” Another AlgoSec user acknowledged AlgoSec’s ability to help him prepare for the audit in a short time and assist with continuous compliance . The network manager added, “The risk and compliance area is key to ensuring we conform to company regulations .” A network administrator at a government agency with over 10,000 employees, simply stated, “For us, it is a great management and audit tool .” Compliance Many factors come into play in the selection of a network security policy management solution. In a business environment, where companies want to be agile, users want solutions that offer visibility into traffic and applications. For IT Central Station members, a good solution automates rules management along with configuration and change management. The best solution will also facilitate compliance, both internal and regulatory. With these qualities, an NSPM will be able to align security with business and make sure that your network adheres to your stated security policies. Conclusion User reviews, candid discussions, and more for enterprise technology professionals. The Internet has completely changed the way we make buying decisions. We now use ratings and review sites to see what other real users think before we buy electronics, book a hotel, visit a doctor or choose a restaurant. But in the world of enterprise technology, most of the information online and in your inbox comes from vendors. What you really want is objective information from other users. IT Central Station provides technology professionals with a community platform to share information about enterprise solutions. IT Central Station is committed to offering user-contributed information that is valuable, objective, and relevant. We validate all reviewers with a triple authentication process, and protect your privacy by providing an environment where you can post anonymously and freely express your views. As a result, the community becomes a valuable resource, ensuring you get access to the right information and connect to the right people, whenever you need it. www.itcentralstation.com IT Central Station does not endorse or recommend any products or services. The views and opinions of reviewers quoted in this document, IT Central Station websites, and IT Central Station materials do not reflect the opinions of IT Central Station. About IT Central Station AlgoSec enables the world’s largest organizations to align business and security strategies, and manage their network security based on what matters most — the applications that power their businesses. Through a single pane of glass, the AlgoSec Security Management Solution provides holistic, business-level visibility across the entire network security infrastructure, including business applications and their connectivity flows — in the cloud and across SDN and on-premise networks. With AlgoSec users can auto-discover and migrate application connectivity, proactively analyze risk from the business perspective, tie cyber-attacks to business processes and intelligently automate time-consuming security changes— all zero-touch, and seamlessly orchestrated across any heterogeneous environment. Over 1,800 leading organizations, including 20 Fortune 50 companies, have relied on AlgoSec to drive business agility, security and compliance. AlgoSec has provided the industry’s only money-back guarantee since 2005. Let's start your journey to our business-centric network security. About AlgoSec Select a size Overview Abstract Introduction The continuing evolution of NSPM Challenges inherent in selecting an NSPM solution NSPM solution selection factors Network security policy as a business issue Visibility Automation Compliance Conclusion About IT Central Station About AlgoSec Get the latest insights from the experts Choose a better way to manage your network

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The research found that organizations are prioritizing security, seamless integration, and compliance in hybrid cloud environments with Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, AWS and Microsoft Azure among the leaders The 2024 State of Network Security Report Reveals a Shift Towards Multi-Cloud Environments, with a 47% Increase in SD-WAN and 25% Uptick in SASE Adoption The research found that organizations are prioritizing security, seamless integration, and compliance in hybrid cloud environments with Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, AWS and Microsoft Azure among the leaders June 27, 2024 Speak to one of our experts RIDGEFIELD PARK, NJ, June 27, 2024 – Global cybersecurity leader AlgoSec has released its annual ‘The State of Network Security Report’ providing a broad view of network security in hybrid cloud environments, identifying the most popular strategies adopted by security professionals. The report sheds light on key market trends and highlights the solutions and technologies that are in demand and why, helping organizations to navigate the complexities of modern network security. Based on two comparative surveys conducted in H2 of 2022 and 2023, AlgoSec’s research evaluated market leaders including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and more, identifying significant shifts in cloud platform adoption, deployment of firewalls and Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), as well as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) implementation. Key findings from the report include: ● Security, continuity, and compliance driving cloud platform selection – When selecting a cloud platform, organizations prioritize seamless integration, compliance, and robust security features. While the overall adoption of cloud platforms has grown, the ranking of different vendors has remained relatively stable. Azure continues to be the most widely used platform, closely followed by AWS, which has shown the fastest pace of growth. ● The growing adoption of SD-WAN – The move towards remote working and cloud computing has been the catalyst for the increased deployment of SD-WAN, ensuring secure and reliable connections across multiple locations. That is reflected in the report, with a steep decline in the number of organizations that had no SD-WAN solution from 55.2% in 2022 to 34% in 2023. ● The rise in SASE adoption – With network infrastructures becoming more complex, SASE has become a popular solution for organizations, consolidating multiple security functions into a single, unified, cloud service. The report found the rate of SASE adoption has increased year-on-year, with notable growth of Zscaler implementation from 21.9% in 2022 to 37% in 2023, and Prisma access implementation from 16.2% in 2022 to 22.8% in 2023. ● The increasing importance of firewalls in cloud estates – With more businesses looking to secure corporate resources across complex cloud networks, firewall implementation has increased as a result, providing organizations with the means to safeguard against external threats. The rate of adoption has risen significantly, with only 7.1% of respondents saying they had no firewalls deployed in 2023 - a sharp drop from the 28.4% recorded in 2022. ● The persistence of hybrid networks – Despite the general shift towards cloud adoption, on-premise data centers and device rollouts remain a significant feature of the network landscape. “According to our research there has been greater adoption of cloud-based network security solutions across the board”, said Eran Shiff, VP Product of AlgoSec. “However, there is still progress to be made in the SD-WAN and SASE space. By identifying the key trends and the most popular solutions on the market, we can provide some much-needed clarity into the complex world of network security.” The full report can be accessed here . About AlgoSec AlgoSec, a global cybersecurity leader, empowers organizations to secure application connectivity and cloud-native applications throughout their multi-cloud and hybrid network. Trusted by more than 1,800 of the world’s leading organizations, AlgoSec’s application-centric approach enables secure acceleration of business application deployment by centrally managing application connectivity and security policies across the public clouds, private clouds, containers, and on-premises networks. Using its unique vendor-agnostic deep algorithm for intelligent change management automation, AlgoSec enables the acceleration of digital transformation projects, helps prevent business application downtime and substantially reduces manual work and exposure to security risks. AlgoSec’s policy management and CNAPP platforms provide a single source for visibility into security and compliance issues within cloud-native applications as well as across the hybrid network environment, to ensure ongoing adherence to internet security standards, industry, and internal regulations. Learn how AlgoSec enables application owners, information security experts, DevSecOps and cloud security teams to deploy business applications up to 10 times faster while maintaining security at https://www.algosec.com .