When it comes to cybersecurity and security strategy, we know nothing is simple. There’s the potential for complexities, vulnerabilities, calamity, and confusion at every turn, but, that said, being in this space would be a whole lot more boring without it, right? Okay, okay, there’s lots to handle and discover, but at least we can start somewhere together, and that’s with information security policy management.
In this blog, we’ll tackle data security policy management, and, more specifically, how to manage multiple overlapping security policies across different environments. So if your IT team is ready to reduce complexity, avoid misconfigurations, and streamline policy management for your sensitive data – and see/reap all the benefits of these positives outcomes – hop onboard with us below.
K.I.S.S. (“keeping it simple” security)
When your organization is using technologies across a number of different environments (read: vendors/technologies), each with varying IT security policies, it’s important to keep it all together. The simplest way to do this can start with a “unified security policy.” This provides a centralized view of an organization’s security policies and how they compare to corporate and industry compliance standards.
…But Don’t Make it Weird
With a unified security policy in place, the next step is to normalize each device, rule (including network access control), and object into a standard format. This concept, “security policy normalization,” allows users to query and manage rules from one single security controls access point. (we talk about this a bit here, as well)
Keep it Clean
By having a unified security policy, that’s also normalized, it’s important to keep things current. Ensure you have a “network security policy rule management and cleanup” approach in place. This will allow users to delete old and unused rules, reducing policy clutter and confusion.
Thankfully, there are ways to automate this process, and technology exists that will automatically:
- Identify and remove unnecessary rules
- Optimize rules to enhance security posture and network functionality/workflows
- Organize and prioritize rules for better readability and compliance (e.g., HIPAA, NIST, PCI DSS, GDPR, ISO, etc.) with best practices and audit reports
Good Hygiene = Great Benefits
Some other advantages to sticking to a strong security policy rule management and cleanup approach:
- A reduced attack surface (and thus, reduced security threats, security incidents, cyber attacks, etc.)
- Thousands of security teams’ hours saved annually
- Faster remediation and incident response times
- Minimized firewall management complexity
- Increased firewall/security agility
- Enhanced security awareness
- Truncating audit prep to hours instead of weeks
- Proactive risk assessment
- Mitigating non-compliance
Stop the (Policy) Sprawl, Get Overlapping Policies Under Wraps
Put another way, all of the efforts above are geared toward mitigating “security policy sprawl,” which is exactly what happens when security policies are inconsistently applied across organizations’ networks and/or security infrastructure.
So how can you keep it all together? Proper orchestration and automation are a good start. Centralized policy management (aka, “unified security policy,” which we covered above) is the right beginning place, and when automated policy management comes into play, you’ll be able to keep all proper policies distributed across all security solutions/providers (which is incredibly critical for those working in a hybrid cloud environment).
Add in the aforementioned cleanup to your security policy management solution, combined with multi-vendor network support, and any network policy change becomes a process that takes minutes, not days.
Let Us Be Your Guide
Ready to put your risk management and security program plan together? We’re here to help. Book a demo with our network security policy management pros for a hands-on experience that can get your security posture going in the desired direction without stress or fuss.
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