The issue of securing corporate networks is very important in today's technological age. There are so many elements of corruption that can be spread into a network that it is imperative that proper precautions be taken to protect your network from these trials.
We will look at the issues of defining and enforcing user-level security policies across your network, immediately detecting and responding to attacks and suspicious activity against your network. Also, we will discuss securely and efficiently managing your network's IP address infrastructure, implementing an open security solution that enables integration with industry-leading and custom applications and managing the total cost of ownership across your secure network.
Defining And Enforcing User-Level Security Policies Across Your Network
An explosive increase in the number of applications, users and IP addresses in use across many organizations is taking place because of the rapid adoption of web technology. Providing reliable network security requires the deployment and enforcement of user-level security policies. User-level security policies deliver access control, authentication, encryption parameters, etc. for individual network users.
Managing this voluminous amount of user information can pose formidable challenges for both network and security administrators. Providing a central, scaleable data store for user-level security information addresses some of the deployment hurdles and facilitates Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).
With LDAP, all of the user information can be stored in a single database and shared among multiple network applications. This enables the enterprise to separate user management from network security management, freeing an organization's valuable security managers from time-consuming and routine user account maintenance responsibilities. It also provides organizations with a greater level of security by delivering highly granular capabilities that recognize the diverse network privileges found in large user communities.
To further complicate the enforcement of user-level security, most applications track IP addresses as opposed to actual users. In environments where Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is used, utilizing IP addresses for security policies is not effective because IP addresses are dynamically assigned. The challenge for network security managers is to be able to utilize technologies like DHCP while still managing a security-based user identity. In addition, the security solution should also provide detailed log and audit information containing a history of all network communications by user.
Immediately Detecting And Responding To Attacks And Suspicious Activity Against Networks
Network security is only as good as the policies put in place to protect your network and users. To maintain the highest degree of network protection, enterprises should continually evaluate the effectiveness of their security policy by providing real-time detection of unauthorized activity. An effective intrusion detection solution (IDS) can provide an additional measure of security by detecting a broad range of attacks and suspicious network activities.
Attack recognition is insufficient by itself, however. The IDS must be tightly integrated with the enterprise security solution in order to respond immediately and prevent unauthorized access to the organization's valuable network resources. Without this tight integration, IDS does not offer much protection against network attacks. In addition to real-time response, a well designed IDS will provide comprehensive event logging for complete auditing capabilities and extensive alerting mechanisms to notify the proper IT personnel.
Securely And Efficiently Managing Your Network's IP Address Infrastructure
The number of computers and devices, each requiring an IP address and name, has grown exponentially. Managing the IP address and name space of fast-growing networks is becoming increasingly difficult. Manually configuring the IP address of every computer and device on a network and editing corresponding network-based configuration files are no longer viable - they are error-prone, labor-intensive and lack the integration needed by today's networks.
The net result has been an IP address infrastructure that has no central control is too expensive to manage and cannot provide the scalability or reliability needed by the modern enterprise. IP address management solutions which provide centralized management and distributed administration of enterprise-scale IP network infrastructure can be extremely valuable in meeting these challenges, but only if tightly integrated with the overall network infrastructure, including the enterprise security policy.
Implementing An Open Security Solution That Enables Integration With Industry-Leading And Custom Applications
Network security managers are responsible for choosing from many specialized hardware and software products to solve their organizations' network security and infrastructure needs. Although individual products from different vendors are attractive as best-of-breed solutions in specific areas (such as virus detection or authentication), organizations require assurance that the disparate products will integrate to provide seamless, comprehensive network security.
Alternatively, enterprise can choose to purchase a broad range of solutions from a single vendor as part of a product "suite." Even though this may alleviate some of integration issues, it may severely limit the choice of application. It is improbable to find any single vendor who can provide the desired capabilities across a spectrum of security technologies. An open architecture with well-defined interfaces enables third-party security applications to plug in seamlessly with the overall security policy. In addition, your enterprises leverage application-programming interfaces to develop and deploy custom application to meet your specific network security needs.
Managing The Total Cost Of Ownership Across Your Secure Network
Managing the security solutions for an organization can become an expensive task for human resources. Security solutions are a significant portion of the total cost of ownership for an enterprise network. The ability to manage all elements of an enterprise security installation from a centralized, integrated console is what differentiates a cohesive, manageable, cost-effective solution from a mere patchwork of individual point products.
Using separate, independent management interfaces for even a handful of products not only increases management overhead and its associated costs, but also can introduce security risks if separate and redundant updates put network security enforcement points in an inconsistent state. Further, any changes to the network policy should be automatically propagated throughout the entire network. Network security managers must manually reconfigure each enforcement point with every policy change if centralized management is not used
We will look at the issues of defining and enforcing user-level security policies across your network, immediately detecting and responding to attacks and suspicious activity against your network. Also, we will discuss securely and efficiently managing your network's IP address infrastructure, implementing an open security solution that enables integration with industry-leading and custom applications and managing the total cost of ownership across your secure network.
Defining And Enforcing User-Level Security Policies Across Your Network
An explosive increase in the number of applications, users and IP addresses in use across many organizations is taking place because of the rapid adoption of web technology. Providing reliable network security requires the deployment and enforcement of user-level security policies. User-level security policies deliver access control, authentication, encryption parameters, etc. for individual network users.
Managing this voluminous amount of user information can pose formidable challenges for both network and security administrators. Providing a central, scaleable data store for user-level security information addresses some of the deployment hurdles and facilitates Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).
With LDAP, all of the user information can be stored in a single database and shared among multiple network applications. This enables the enterprise to separate user management from network security management, freeing an organization's valuable security managers from time-consuming and routine user account maintenance responsibilities. It also provides organizations with a greater level of security by delivering highly granular capabilities that recognize the diverse network privileges found in large user communities.
To further complicate the enforcement of user-level security, most applications track IP addresses as opposed to actual users. In environments where Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is used, utilizing IP addresses for security policies is not effective because IP addresses are dynamically assigned. The challenge for network security managers is to be able to utilize technologies like DHCP while still managing a security-based user identity. In addition, the security solution should also provide detailed log and audit information containing a history of all network communications by user.
Immediately Detecting And Responding To Attacks And Suspicious Activity Against Networks
Network security is only as good as the policies put in place to protect your network and users. To maintain the highest degree of network protection, enterprises should continually evaluate the effectiveness of their security policy by providing real-time detection of unauthorized activity. An effective intrusion detection solution (IDS) can provide an additional measure of security by detecting a broad range of attacks and suspicious network activities.
Attack recognition is insufficient by itself, however. The IDS must be tightly integrated with the enterprise security solution in order to respond immediately and prevent unauthorized access to the organization's valuable network resources. Without this tight integration, IDS does not offer much protection against network attacks. In addition to real-time response, a well designed IDS will provide comprehensive event logging for complete auditing capabilities and extensive alerting mechanisms to notify the proper IT personnel.
Securely And Efficiently Managing Your Network's IP Address Infrastructure
The number of computers and devices, each requiring an IP address and name, has grown exponentially. Managing the IP address and name space of fast-growing networks is becoming increasingly difficult. Manually configuring the IP address of every computer and device on a network and editing corresponding network-based configuration files are no longer viable - they are error-prone, labor-intensive and lack the integration needed by today's networks.
The net result has been an IP address infrastructure that has no central control is too expensive to manage and cannot provide the scalability or reliability needed by the modern enterprise. IP address management solutions which provide centralized management and distributed administration of enterprise-scale IP network infrastructure can be extremely valuable in meeting these challenges, but only if tightly integrated with the overall network infrastructure, including the enterprise security policy.
Implementing An Open Security Solution That Enables Integration With Industry-Leading And Custom Applications
Network security managers are responsible for choosing from many specialized hardware and software products to solve their organizations' network security and infrastructure needs. Although individual products from different vendors are attractive as best-of-breed solutions in specific areas (such as virus detection or authentication), organizations require assurance that the disparate products will integrate to provide seamless, comprehensive network security.
Alternatively, enterprise can choose to purchase a broad range of solutions from a single vendor as part of a product "suite." Even though this may alleviate some of integration issues, it may severely limit the choice of application. It is improbable to find any single vendor who can provide the desired capabilities across a spectrum of security technologies. An open architecture with well-defined interfaces enables third-party security applications to plug in seamlessly with the overall security policy. In addition, your enterprises leverage application-programming interfaces to develop and deploy custom application to meet your specific network security needs.
Managing The Total Cost Of Ownership Across Your Secure Network
Managing the security solutions for an organization can become an expensive task for human resources. Security solutions are a significant portion of the total cost of ownership for an enterprise network. The ability to manage all elements of an enterprise security installation from a centralized, integrated console is what differentiates a cohesive, manageable, cost-effective solution from a mere patchwork of individual point products.
Using separate, independent management interfaces for even a handful of products not only increases management overhead and its associated costs, but also can introduce security risks if separate and redundant updates put network security enforcement points in an inconsistent state. Further, any changes to the network policy should be automatically propagated throughout the entire network. Network security managers must manually reconfigure each enforcement point with every policy change if centralized management is not used
