The IT network acts as the circulatory system for your business, ensuring that data, the life’s blood of your organization, moves where it is needed to make critical decisions. As vital as the network is to your company, it is also a key point of vulnerability.
Hackers can use the network to infiltrate your organization and attack data when it is most vulnerable, while in transit. Once cybercriminals have breached the network, they can lie in wait to stage additional attacks or move laterally across business systems, causing extensive damage.
To prevent cybercriminals from exploiting the network to steal data, compromise information, and trigger costly downtime, companies must build resilient and secure networks. A secure network needs to be up to date, vulnerability free, and tightly controlled.
Keeping Your Network Up to Date
An up-to-date network is a secure network. Your company should keep track of when switches, routers, and firewalls are reaching end-of-life to avoid losing support for them.
Tracking the lifecycle of your network hardware and software can be challenging, especially if they were acquired at different times from multiple vendors. That’s why your company should implement automatic updates for your network. A secure network will be capable of running regular updates to ensure that your technology is always current and performing optimally.
Eliminating Network Vulnerabilities
Patch management is an essential part of building a secure network. Regularly patching the network ensures that its hardware and software is free of vulnerabilities, such as bugs, that hackers can exploit to gain entry and access data. As part of patch management, your company should be able to test patched devices in a simulated production environment to guarantee their efficacy.
With regular network patching, your company can keep up with the pace of the rapidly evolving threat landscape. Patching also helps your business meet the latest compliance regulations for data security and privacy. While organizations can set windows for patching, ideally, your network should be equipped with automatic patching capabilities so that you never miss an opportunity to strengthen your network security.
Segmenting the Network
One way to lessen the negative impact of a cyberattack is by segmenting the network. When the network is divided into smaller sections, the spread of an attack is limited. For example, network segmentation stops malware from moving laterally across the network to infect multiple systems.
Companies can use network segmentation to enforce security policies. If businesses want to prevent customers, users, or certain employees from accessing a system that handles sensitive data, they can create a segment of the network that traffic can’t reach. Microsegmentation allows organizations to fine-tune their network security at the application layer for a more granular approach that meets specific security requirements.
Controlling Access
Zero Trust security has become the standard for network security, meaning that companies need to control access to their networks. Network access control (NAC) solutions are invaluable because so many of the employees at today’s companies use mobile devices to access the network. NAC also helps protect the networks of businesses that rely on connected IoT devices.
With an NAC solution, companies gain visibility into the network and the devices that are accessing it. NAC enables organizations to set and enforce policies for denying or restricting the access of devices that fail to meet compliance standards. Incident response capabilities block and isolate noncompliant devices to prevent risk.
Isolating Failures
A resilient network ensures that your company is always available, even after a traumatic incident, such as a breach, or during periods of extremely high traffic. Your network should be capable of bouncing back and recovering quickly. Companies can design their network architecture to lessen the impact of breaches and network failures to promote resilience.
Following a decentralized network model instead of a hub-and-spoke architecture enables your company to separate parts of your network. When the network is organized into clusters or modules, outages remain isolated and can’t spread to other parts of the network. Decoupling network elements also keeps outages contained. Network protocols can be set to automatically reroute to avoid problem areas.
Overcoming Today’s Network Security Challenges
Securing the IT network is especially challenging because today’s companies are often geographically dispersed with multiple branch offices. Organizations have created hybrid workplaces that mix in-office and remote work, meaning cybercriminals have more opportunities than ever to target sensitive data through the network.
Partnering with Xceptional for Network Security will ensure your company has everything you need for a secure, reliable, and resilient network. We understand the network security challenges companies face and can customize a solution to meet the unique needs of your business. We provide upgrades, patches, and around-the-clock monitoring to ensure your network is running on the latest and most secure technology so that your data is always protected.
Want to know how to improve your company’s network security? Ask for a complimentary strategy session from Xceptional to find out.