Regardless of what stage you’re at in your digital transformation, ditno can help you secure your network and drive better business outcomes. To find out more, read the latest blog in our “How to drive your digital transformation success safely” series below. 

Organisations are increasingly moving towards a hybrid environment in which some of their IT infrastructure remains on-premises while other workloads have been moved into the cloud. It’s essential to have consistent security across these hybrid environments but many organisations rely solely on their perimeter firewall for protection. This can become a problem if there is any misconfiguration in the security tools. For example, if there is one rule that lets the entire internet access a company’s servers, it may not be picked up unless someone manually reviews all the rules. This can create significant security vulnerabilities for the organisation.

Until recently, moving to the cloud didn’t create significant security challenges because organisations’ environments were relatively static and easy to corral. Now, a true hybrid approach means that organisations are consuming services and data from anywhere, adding exponential complexity. Users want to do everything faster, new services are being introduced, and every change adds new risk.

Since digital transformation tends to involve migrating to the cloud, this type of misconfiguration is relatively common and can put the success of a digital transformation at risk. As businesses move their workloads, they often assume that their existing security controls will remain appropriate but this isn’t necessarily true.

Avoiding misconfiguration and non-compliance while expanding across cloud environments is a three-step process:

1. Conduct regular risk assessments

It’s essential to start with a risk assessment so you can see where the biggest risks are. However, many organisations are reluctant to do this regularly because of the time and costs involved in doing it manually.

A useful risk assessment should identify rules that aren’t compliant or don’t address the organisation’s vulnerabilities and drill down to device-level to reveal any exposure that has been introduced due to misconfiguration. This takes time and a methodical approach.

Importantly, risk assessments are not a set-and-forget activity; continuous assessments are required because the environment is likely to be changing and evolving all the time. A network that is protected one day could have gaping vulnerabilities the next day due to the adoption of new services, for example.

Automating the risk assessment process can help ensure that all controls are assessed in real time, identifying potential misconfiguration and allowing it to be remediated before it introduces risk.

2. Implement a strategic governance model through Network Security Policy Management (NSPM)

A strategic governance model should automatically monitor the network and ensure, in real time, that all controls are correct and up to date. With a real-time governance layer, non-compliant rules can be identified down to device-level.

This is a defence-in-depth approach that complements current security controls. For example, it can be used to confirm that the outer firewall is being managed correctly, identifying whether servers are being accessed from non-trusted IP addresses. This process can help verify configurations and controls to ensure they’re working properly and to protect the organisation if a mistake occurs.

3. Implement a cloud-control framework

It’s important to review the protective measures that are in place for the on-premises environment against the measures that are in place in the cloud. Ensuring the network is protected consistently across environments is crucial. A cloud-control framework extends the organisation’s security across the cloud.

This evolves into true NSPM, which offers a consistent way to manage network security controls across any and every platform in use.

What to look for in a NSPM provider

To achieve a truly secure network, organisations need to combine real-time governance and micro-segmentation. Doing this effectively requires data and automation.

When choosing a NSPM provider, organisations should look for one that can:

• provide a suite of unified network security tools to enforce policies across hybrid environments
• prevent non-compliant controls from being deployed without the necessary approvals and privileges
• deliver centralised visibility across hybrid networks with risk analysis, real-time compliance, and application mapping.

ditno offers a hybrid-ready NSPM solution that avoids the need for separate security solutions to cover on-premises and cloud environments. This lets you focus on digital transformation without adding risk or complexity, while maintaining your security posture.

There is no need to start again from scratch. ditno works with your current systems to provide additional protection and prevent security gaps from forming without your knowledge.

At ditno, we’re committed to helping our customers improve their IT security and protect their business at every stage of their transformation. For more information on how ditno can help your business, contact the team today.

To read the other blogs in our “How to drive your digital transformation success safely” series, click here. 

‍