Network Security Management: A Comprehensive Guide for IT Teams

Network security management involves implementing processes, policies, and tools to protect the organization’s network infrastructure, data, and IT assets. A failure to implement strong network security management can introduce security gaps that an attacker could exploit to steal sensitive data or harm the availability and performance of corporate systems. 

Common Network Security Management Challenges

Network security management is a complex and growing process. Some common challenges that organizations face include:

• Network Complexity: As networks grow larger and more complex, security teams can struggle to effectively monitor, manage, and secure them.
• Evolving Threats: The cyber threat landscape evolves rapidly, making it difficult for security teams to stay abreast of the latest threats.
• Skills Shortage: Organizations often struggle to attract and retain skilled security personnel, leaving knowledge gaps in their teams.
• Regulatory Compliance: New and evolving regulations introduce new security and reporting requirements.

The Evolving Threat Landscape

Emerging Threats in Network Security

Network security is a constantly evolving area. Some emerging threats that security teams must address include:

• Social Engineering: Hackers use social engineering to exploit human psychology to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential information or performing actions that compromise security. With the growth of deepfakes and generative AI, these attacks will only grow more sophisticated and difficult to safeguard against.
• AI-Powered Attacks: An AI-powered security threat involves cybercriminals using artificial intelligence to automate and enhance their attacks, making them more sophisticated and harder to detect. For example, AI can be used to create highly convincing phishing emails or to rapidly identify and exploit vulnerabilities in a network. These pose a serious threat to corporate network security.
• IoT Vulnerabilities: The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing, and these devices commonly contain vulnerabilities such as insecure interfaces providing entry points for attackers, and the transmission of unencrypted data. As more devices are connected to the network, this introduces additional vulnerabilities to target.
• Supply Chain Risks: Many organizations allow third-party access to their networks or rely on external software for various tasks. This introduces potential risks if an attacker compromises a trusted third party and exploits that trust relationship to target the organization.
• Cloud Vulnerabilities: Cloud usage is growing, yet many organizations struggle to properly configure and secure their cloud environments. Insufficient access controls and unencrypted data in transit provide attackers with information that could be used to compromise security.  As a result, this cloud infrastructure is often vulnerable and may be used to access on-prem systems as well.

Why Network Security Management is More Critical Than Ever

The introduction of new devices to corporate networks and the development of new attack techniques provide bad actors with many more options to exploit an organization.

Organizations can combat these threats by implementing strong network security management processes and solutions. With greater control over its network and security, an organization can identify, block, or remediate these new and emerging threats.

Implementing Effective Network Security Management

Implementing a network security management program is essential to preventing cyber threats. Some important steps toward such a strategy include:

• Conducting Regular Risk Assessments: Risk assessments analyze an organization’s IT environment for vulnerabilities and other threats to the business. Performing these regularly guides the design of a network security strategy, and to identify and address current deficiencies.
• Developing a Comprehensive Security Strategy: A security strategy includes risk assessment, defined security objectives, detailed security plan, followed by continuous monitoring and improvement.  The strategy should include incident response planning and effective training to prepare for and address security threats.
• Implementing Multi-Layered Security: This approach of multi-layer security controls involves implementing multiple security measures to protect a business from various attacks.  If one measure fails, or is breached, additional layers of protection will significantly reduce the likelihood that the attack will be successful.

Best Practices for Network Security Management

Network security management is a critical component of a corporate cybersecurity strategy. Some best practices for network security management include:

• ZTNA Architecture: Zero-trust network access (ZTNA) applies the principles of least privilege and explicit verification to all requests for access to corporate resources. By limiting implicit trust within the organization’s IT systems, it reduces attackers’ abilities to find and exploit any potential security gaps.
• Continuous Monitoring and Analysis: Cyberattacks can happen at any time, and a company needs to be ready for them. Continuous monitoring and analysis enables security teams to identify a threat as early as possible, limiting the risk to the organization.
• Regular Security Audits and Penetration Testing: Security audits and penetration testing look for vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems that could be exploited by an attacker. Performing regular audits for security updates and testing limits the vulnerabilities that could exist without an organization’s knowledge.
• Incident Response Planning and Testing: A security team should have an incident response plan and team in place before an incident occurs. Planning helps to ensure that everyone knows their role and enables them to remediate issues rapidly. 

Essential Network Security Management Tools and Technologies

Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs)

Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) combine the traditional capabilities of a network firewall with deep packet inspection (DPI) and other security functions, such as integrated intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS) and data loss prevention. An NGFW is able to block malicious content from entering an organization’s network or sensitive data from leaving it.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Security information and event management (SIEM) solutions offer centralized visibility and analysis of security data. Data is collected from various sources (logs, security tools, etc.) into a centralized repository where it is analyzed and made available to human analysts. This increases security visibility, speeds up threat detection, and improves operational efficiency.

Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions build on SIEM’s capabilities by incorporating advanced analytics and support for automated incident remediation. By breaking down silos and automatically remediating intrusions, they minimize attackers’ access to corporate networks and their potential effects on the business.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

Endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions provide threat detection and incident response on an endpoint. These endpoint protection tools can be invaluable for protecting against ransomware and other forms of malicious content.

Zero Trust Connectivity Solutions

Zero trust connectivity solutions, such as ZTNA, apply the zero trust security model to network access. Unlike virtual private networks (VPNs), which offer unrestricted access to the corporate network, zero trust solutions allow access on a case-by-case basis and apply least privilege access controls. Limiting access based on need to know reduces an organization’s digital attack surface and aids regulatory compliance.

Integrating Tools into a Cohesive Strategy

Many organizations deploy various point security products to address specific threats; however, this creates a security architecture that is complex to monitor and manage. Instead, solutions should be integrated into a single platform to enable centralized, comprehensive visibility and management.

Compliance Considerations in Network Security Management

Network security management is also critical to an organization’s regulatory compliance strategy. Some key regulations for IT leaders to be aware of include:

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): GDPR is an EU regulation protecting the personal data of EU citizens. It imposes security requirements and restrictions on how data may be used without consent.
• Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act (HIPAA): HIPAA protects health data for U.S. citizens. Healthcare providers and their business associates must control access to and properly secure protected health information (PHI).
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS): PCI DSS is an international regulation developed by the payment card industry. It imposes security requirements for payment card data to prevent data breaches and financial fraud.

The Human Element in Network Security Management

Security Awareness Training Strategies

Security awareness training should be designed to address an organization’s insider threats. While a disgruntled employee might take harmful actions out of malice, it’s much more common for employees to make mistakes or take actions due to unawareness or inexperience.

Security awareness training should be geared toward avoiding these mistakes and inadvertent violations of corporate policies. Training employees to handle common threats, like phishing, and how and why to follow corporate policies eliminates many security risks.

Fostering a Security-Conscious Culture

A security-conscious culture helps reduce an organization’s security risks by empowering employees to identify and act to prevent risks. One way to foster such a culture is a security champions program, which provides a member of each team with additional training and resources to promote corporate cybersecurity. By providing employees with a teammate to ask questions or consult on security measures, an organization reduces the risk of shadow IT and common security mistakes.

Addressing Insider Threats

Most insider threats are caused by accidents or a lack of security training. In addition to providing cybersecurity awareness training, organizations should also introduce security controls that make damaging mistakes more difficult to perform. For example, implementing zero trust network access reduces the risk of insider threats since employees have less access and opportunities to make damaging mistakes.

Measuring Network Security Management Effectiveness

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for IT Leaders

The goal of network security management is to reduce the number and impact of security incidents that the organization experiences. Some key KPIs to track include:

• Number of security incidents.
• Mean time to detection (MTTD) and mean time to remediation (MTTR) for security incidents.
• Average time to patch for software vulnerabilities.
• Rates of compliance with corporate security policies and regulatory requirements.

Demonstrating the Business Impact of Network Security Management

Network security management can benefit the business by reducing the number of security incidents, improving operational efficiency, and streamlining an organization’s regulatory compliance. Security teams can demonstrate these impacts by calculating the estimated cost of potential breaches, quantifying performance improvements, and identifying cost reductions associated with regulatory compliance.

Integrating Network Security Management with Key IT Initiatives

Network security management plays an important rule in many IT priorities and initiatives, including:

• Cloud Migration and Security: As organizations embrace cloud infrastructure, network and cloud security become even more important. Security teams not only need to secure traffic within on-prem environments but also within each cloud platform and between cloud environments.
• Improving IT Efficiency while Supporting Digital Transformation Initiatives: Digital transformation initiatives can help the business evolve, but they also introduce new infrastructure challenges. Network security management is essential to ensure that new systems are not vulnerable to attack and that network performance doesn’t suffer as a result of the transition.
• Enabling Secure Remote Work: The growth of remote and hybrid work models makes it necessary for organizations to secure traffic flowing between remote workers and the corporate network. This requires comprehensive security measures for all remote workers, regardless of their location.

The Future of Network Security Management

Network security management needs to continuously evolve with the ever-changing threats. Some key trends in the future of network security management include:

• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML): AI/ML solutions can identify trends and anomalies in network data that point to security threats or other issues with the network. As these solutions are increasingly integrated into security solutions, threat detection will improve, and security teams will benefit from increased support for security automation.
• Expansion of IoT Devices: The emergence of 5G networks has enabled the dramatic expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT). This creates new network security challenges as the number of connected devices increases and introduces new vulnerable systems into corporate networks.
• Automation and Orchestration: The use of automation and orchestration will become increasingly prevalent. Automation tools will handle routine security tasks, such as patch management and threat detection, reducing the burden on security teams and improving response times. Orchestration will integrate various security tools and processes, allowing for more cohesive and efficient management of security incidents and policies across complex IT environments.

Empowering IT Teams Through Effective Network Security Management

Network security management enhances the effectiveness of corporate network security programs by implementing defined strategies and governance. This helps to prevent potential security vulnerabilities and oversights that could leave the organization susceptible to attack.
Network security is most effective when all key capabilities are available via a single, integrated platform. Learn more about how Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) can enhance your organization’s network security across on-prem and cloud environments.