Putting the Pieces Together Faster with Tufin Head Start

If you’ve ever done a jigsaw puzzle, you may know that overwhelming feeling that comes from dumping all the oddly shaped, different colored pieces out of the box the first time. This is the point where the possibilities can feel endless. Even more overwhelming, if you’re doing the puzzle with someone else who has a different starting philosophy than you do, the first steps can feel frustrating as you try to get to the end result.

Centralizing and automating network security policies can feel the same way. You know you need a solution to mature your network security policy management processes. However, when you look at all the scattered pieces laid out in front of you, you can feel overwhelmed by the sheer number and diversity of the tools that you need to connect. For example, you might have any or all of the following:

Traditional firewalls

Next-generation firewalls (NGFW)

Cloud-based firewalls

SD-WAN

SASE

In the competitive puzzling world (yes, it’s a real thing), people team up to complete jigsaw puzzles as quickly as possible. With Tufin’s Head Start program, you can work with our Professional Services team to achieve value from your network security policy management puzzle 30 days faster.

Identify Objectives

In the puzzling world, your end objective is obvious – turn those pieces into a larger picture. However, even though you know what the final puzzle should look like, you need to work the puzzles in smaller sections to efficiently complete it.

Similarly, in network security policy management, you may have different or multiple objectives. For example, you may want to centralize your network security activities for any of these reasons:

Attack surface reduction: connecting vulnerability scanner data with network connectivity insights to mitigate attack risks

Security policy rule management and cleanup: eliminating duplicate, expired, unused, or shadowed rules and objects to minimize complexity

Improve regulatory compliance: implementing and enforcing least privilege access requirements across complex hybrid environments

Digital transformation: automating network access workflows to increase time-to-business value by improving connectivity

A program that achieves all these objectives is the finished puzzle, but to get there, you may need to work on each section separately. When you work with Tufin’s Professional Services team as part of the Head Start program, you can streamline your implementation by discussing:

Your use cases

Your desired outcomes

Value that you want to achieve first

Organize your assets

In puzzling, one of the first steps is to flip over all the puzzle pieces so that you can see what you have. The equivalent activity for network security policy management is to identify all your current devices and assets.

The good news is that this process can be completed in a spreadsheet. Some things you want to consider include:

General information: the high-level details that may include target operating system, environment, device count, availability requirements, and disaster recovery

Deployment sizing information: the total number of virtual machines or appliances you plan to onboard

Ports and services: all the device related ports and details

Firewall devices: a list that includes firewall vendor name, device name, type, IP addresses, and dynamic topology information

Cloud devices to import: listing out the account name, access key ID, ARN, Proxy IP for cloud services like AWS, Azure, and GCP

As a part of the Tufin Head Start program, you receive a Tufin Deployment Guide that includes the following information and spreadsheets to help you organize your deployment:

Deployment details: general information, cluster information, deployment sizing information

Authorization options: details about the different ways to authenticate to Tufin, like LDAP, TACACS+, RADIUS, or SAML SSO

Ports and services: list of devices related ports for the central cluster being deployed

Firewall devices, level 3 devices, and cloud services: individual tabs to track information about the different services that you plan to deploy in Tufin

Links to relevant Knowledge Center articles: Tufin documentation that walks you through what you need to know about deploying the different devices and services

Tufin’s Professional Services team will create a specific-to-you Deployment Guide so that all you have to do is fill in the blank spaces to prepare for your deployment.

Build your team

In team speed puzzling, you need to communicate and collaborate to build a fast, efficient strategy. Working with the right team that understands your environment can help you achieve a faster time-to-value for your deployment. In a world where budgets are limited and leadership wants results, having a team to work with you can prove that you made the right vendor decision.

When you’re building your implementation team, you should consider the following:

Internal resources: infrastructure staff, policy stakeholders, integration teams, like ServiceNow developers

External resources: Vendor customer success teams, pre-sales, account executives, Tufin Technical delivery experts, and Project Managers with extensive experience in how the puzzle fits together and driving to value

For many organizations, the biggest cause for a delayed deployment is understanding and planning their infrastructure. To realize value faster, you can work with Tufin’s Professional Services team as part of the Head Start program to:

Understand our delivery methodology

Create a well-structured deployment using supporting tools

Get full insight on infrastructure architecture requirements appropriately scaled to meet your Tufin environment needs

Learn where to find educational resources and training materials so your team is prepared for ongoing activities and maintenance

Tufin: Partnering with You to Solve the Network Security Policy Puzzle

With Tufin’s Head Start program, you can achieve value 30 days faster. We’re more than a platform for centralizing security policy management. We’re an extended part of your team so that you can rapidly put together the pieces of your network environment puzzle and gain visibility across your entire network. Our dynamic maps show you how data travels and rapidly identifies, manages and mitigates network and application connectivity issues.

If you’re considering the Tufin Head Start program to improve your time-to-value, contact your Account Executive today.