You hear about an organization falling victim to a massive cyber-attack and the instant action is to scale up your organization’s security measures. The security team will do what it takes to secure the systems, devices, and applications that contain critical business information. Let’s break some news here. Despite implementing stringent control on systems, the chances of your organization getting breached are barely low.
Cyber attackers are rigid in their endeavor. If you stop them from accessing essential systems, they will attack the network on which the systems are operating. After all, the important business data and information is transferred on the network. Cybersecurity experts are now emphasizing on securing the network of the organization.
What is Network Security Management?
Put simply, network security management means implementing policies, procedures, and protocols to safeguard the network of the organization. It is important to keep cyber attackers away from the network and allow only legitimate users- employees, partners, customers, third parties, etc. to access the network.
Network Security Management certainly differs from organization to organization depending on the security requirements. However, we have listed down some network security management best practices that will help in keeping your network clean, and secure.
Network Security Management Best Practices
Insider threat detection:-
Typically, when someone talks about network security, the first thought, generally, is about preventing external intrusions. Most of the time and effort goes into combating external threats. However, a weak internal network is equally harmful and opens doors to massive cyber attack. For instance, employees opting to connect over an unsecured, private network in a BYOD (bring your own device) norm of the organization is a significant insider threat. It is imperative to look within the organization and monitor the activities of the users internally.
Training and education:-
One cybersecurity aware staff is one threat less. It is important to conduct regular cybersecurity training and awareness sessions and talk more about network security management. An employee may take great care in securing his system with stringent password protocols, but comprehensive cybersecurity can be achieved when they know the importance of managing and diligently securing the network they are operating on. For instance, an employee who is unaware of the eavesdropping attack may become a gateway to such an attack.
Conduct a cyber risk assessment:-
This is a great way to ensure efficient network security management. Cyber risk assessment is a procedure that monitors and assesses valuable assets and data. Cyber risk assessment makes it easy to ascertain the risk value of the assets and data in the network and aids in threat detection. You may read our step-by-step guide to cyber risk assessment to implement better network security management.
Invest in an Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution:-
The rise in cybercrimes is indisputable. Cybercriminals are improvising on their attacking techniques to surpass the most stringent security barrier. So, it is invariably difficult to monitor and protect the network of your organization manually. It is profitable to invest in a comprehensive IAM solution that offers capabilities such as Access Management, Access Governance, Privileged Access Management, Customer Identity, and Access Management, etc. A robust IAM solution aids efficient network security management.
As you inculcate the above-mentioned network security management best practices with your organization, the following advantages are instore:
Benefits of Network Security Management
Defense against cybercrime:-
Ultimately, the objective is to prevent cybercrimes from disrupting your organization’s finance, goodwill, and market standing. Efficient network security management restricts unauthorized users from accessing the organization’s valuable data, trade secrets, patents, etc. As a result, the data is transferred between the network is protected, you will achieve optimal data privacy, and reduce the incidences of the data breach significantly.
Different levels of access enabled:-
This is a crucial benefit of network security management. Multiple systems are connected to a network. Certain systems or accesses such as privileged access is extremely important to an organization. Such systems or accesses are generally under a threat actor’s scanner as it contains vital business information. Network security management helps in segregating crucial systems connected to the network. It becomes easier to know which system needs layered authentication like MFA and enable accesses accordingly.
Better customer experience:-
Customers place their trust in organizations that are not subject to cyber threats every now and then. Network security management protects customer data and prevents it from getting leaked, breached, manipulated or modified. No matter how good your product or service may be, ensuring security and protection to customer data is extremely important to provide your customers with great customer experience.
Quicker data recovery:-
The fact that cyber attackers may be successful in breaching your organization by leveraging technologies cannot be overlooked. However, should a breach or cyber-attack take place, data recovery becomes easier with network security management. The organization will be spared of huge losses. After all, the whole process of network security management essentially involves protecting and securing the data via monitoring activities, detecting threats and most importantly, backing up data.
Any organization that wishes to achieve optimal cybersecurity must not only focus on protecting essential systems but also enforce vigilance on the organization’s network as well.
Cyber attackers are present and operating everywhere!