Managing Application Connectivity in the World of Network Security

The case for network security policy management (NSPM) is being adopted by tens of thousands of enterprises. There is a clear trend of investment in this technology. But is there more that enterprises can do to protect their networks and datacenters against security threats? Can increased visibility into business-application usage help to identify additional security holes that threaten the security, agility or compliance posture?

As part of your organization’s security policy management best practices, firewall rules need to be reviewed and recertified regularly to ensure security, compliance and optimal firewall performance. Firewall rules that are out of date, unused or unnecessary should be removed, as firewall bloat creates gaps in your security posture, causes compliance violations, and impacts firewall performance. In the past, firewall rule recertification was often performed manually; an error-prone and time-consuming process. The new application-centric approach to firewall recertification offers an efficient, effective and automated method of recertifying firewall rules.

In the past, the only way to recertify a rule was to manually review the comments field of each firewall rule. At a minimum, the comment should include the name of the original rule requester and the rule’s purpose. Due to the manual nature of the process, it is prone to errors and difficult to maintain.

Through a detailed analysis of the security policy management maturity model, this webinar helps organizations assess their current environment and provides a roadmap for reducing complexity, ensuring application connectivity, and improving their overall security posture.