5 Steps To Robust Network Security

As organisations adopt technologies on a wider scale, IT security teams across the world continue to encounter increasingly complex threats from multiple connected devices. 

With major tasks being automated in the threat landscape, coupled with changes in network and security architecture, network security analysis and management becomes more complex.  

Organizations often lack deep, actionable insight into the behaviour, actions and traffic brought forth by new technologies over wired, wireless and mobile networks. This obstructs the efficacy of network security and compliance teams to plan and implement a viable defense. 

The best way for organisations to overcome these challenges is by adopting a comprehensive approach to network security analysis across all networking vectors — far beyond regular management and reporting. It immerses real-time data in a better layered way, thus improving monitoring, recording, analysing and reporting capabilities of security data across the entire security ecosystem. 

While the right comprehensive network security analytics solution is critical for an organisation, the task at hand remains daunting. There is a general lack of awareness about choosing the right solution. Choosing the right solution should take into account five important factors:

1. Aggregation of Data: Most security analytics solutions bank on agents or sensors to procure visibility into the network traffic. However, it’s not beneficial since the network keeps on swelling as the business grows. An effective network security analytics solution can automate the aggregation, normalization, correlation and contextualization of security data flowing through all firewalls. 

2. Steady Streaming of Analytics: A system’s analytics is not valuable until it has the capability to stream the network security data in an unceasing manner. It should be able to process the data steadily, correlating and analysing the same in real time, and demonstrating the results on a visual dashboard. 

3. Real-Time Dynamic Visualization: Organisations are secure only when the security teams are able to execute deep drilldown investigative and forensic analysis of security data with precision, clarity and speed through a single window. 

4. Deep Analysis of User Analytics: This factor plays a crucial role in a network security analytics solution. The ability to perform deep analysis of user activity trends can help security teams with full visibility into utilization, access and connections across the network. 

5. Real-Time Threat Detection and Remediation: A comprehensive network security analytics solution ought to have investigative capabilities so that the security teams have summarized information that will help them spot and examine insecure activities. The ability to identify real-time threats also helps in quickly managing and addressing risks as soon as they are discovered. 

A sound network security analysis is a pre-requisite for a secure business. Implementing a comprehensive network security solution with these traits can reduce risk across the network. As you gain visibility on your network and device, data can be transformed into intelligence that can decode complicated network security transactions into actionable insights. These insights are helpful in forecasting vulnerabilities and protecting business services and data from attackers.