Network Security Best Practices in 2024

Network security involves monitoring and securing an organization’s network infrastructure. Monitoring network traffic, reducing the attack surface, and enhancing incident response capabilities can dramatically decrease an organization’s security risk exposure.

Assess Your Current Network Security Posture

Understanding the current maturity level of your organization’s network security program is essential to improving it. An organization with full visibility across the entire enterprise network and a solid incident response plan is more prepared to manage any security threats it might face. The following steps can help a company assess its existing network security posture and identify areas for improvement.

Conduct a comprehensive network security audit

A comprehensive network security audit is the first step toward identifying potential security gaps. Some key things to look for include:

• Unpatched vulnerabilities.
• Shadow IT.
• Unnecessary applications and open ports.
• Security visibility and control gaps.
• Deviations from security best practices or corporate policies. 
• Regulatory compliance violations. 

For an initial assessment, an organization may be able to perform this audit internally. However, many companies also require independent audits. A third-party assessment provides specialized security expertise with a “fresh pair of eyes” to identify gaps that internal audits might normally miss.

Establish key metrics and KPIs to track progress

Metrics and KPIs will measure the current security maturity level and encourage a culture of continuous improvement. Without a quantitative means of measuring security maturity, security teams may struggle to show improvement, demonstrate ROI, or identify where additional enhancements are needed. Some useful metrics for tracking security maturity include:

• Mean time to detect and respond to security incidents.
• Percent of systems that have installed the latest patches and updates.
• Number of users who have completed security awareness training.

Use industry frameworks like NIST CSF, ISO 27001, CIS, etc., to map out next steps

Industry frameworks like NIST CSF, ISO 27001, and CIS are optional standards designed to enhance corporate cybersecurity programs. Each of these identifies key capabilities that a security program should include and guidelines for measuring an organization’s security maturity against the framework.

These frameworks can be invaluable for assessing an organization’s existing security maturity level and developing a plan to address identified security gaps. Many frameworks assign an organization an overall maturity score, such as Level 1 (Reactive), 2 (Proactive), or 3 (Optimized). Calculating this score through the framework provides a snapshot of current security maturity and the ability to improve it over time.

After mapping your current security program to a chosen framework, you can use the framework as a roadmap to the next level. Identify an area with low security maturity and the gaps to be addressed. Develop a remediation plan, then execute and iterate.

Implement Essential Prevention Measures

Prevention is the best approach to security since it blocks intrusions before they pose a real risk to the organization. The following best practices manage the risk of insider threats, secure endpoints, and reduce the risk of data breaches.

Segment your network to contain breaches

While most networks are protected by a firewall, organizations can also deploy internal trust boundaries to manage insider threats and protect against lateral movement. This network segmentation provides additional visibility into network usage and enables the organization to contain an intrusion to a single, compromised segment.

Network segmentation can be implemented via various means, including firewalls, VLANs, and software-defined networking (SDN). Some of the common criteria for defining a network segment include:

• Business Function: Systems performing similar business functions communicate frequently and have access to similar types of sensitive data (PII, payment card data, etc.). Placing them in the same segment removes unnecessary barriers while protecting them from advanced threats.
• Trust Level: Different systems within the enterprise network have varying levels of trust and access to sensitive information. Segmenting employee workstations — which are the most likely attack vectors — from high-value assets like databases and critical application servers provides an additional line of defense for these critical assets.
• Compliance Scope: Some regulations mandate that all systems with access to protected data be included in an audit. Segmenting off these systems from the rest of the network decreases both audit scope and the risk of non-compliance.

Secure endpoints with advanced protection

Endpoints are the primary target of most cyberattacks because they are the easiest to compromise. Attackers will infect them with malware, and once the user connects to his corporate network, they have free access to sensitive applications and data. This highlights endpoint protection as a crucial component of a corporate cybersecurity strategy.

EDR and EPP solutions extend visibility into the endpoint to block certain types of attacks. Organizations can augment these defenses with AI-powered malware detection, application whitelisting, and behavioral monitoring.

Harden network devices and servers

Device hardening decreases the opportunities that an attacker has to exploit a vulnerable system. Some best practices for hardening network devices and servers include:

• Uninstall or disable unnecessary applications.
• Block unneeded ports with firewall rules.
• Change default settings.
• Keep device software and firmware regularly updated.
• Physically secure network equipment.
• Implement least privilege access controls.

Encrypt data in transit and at rest

Encryption is the most effective means of protecting data against breaches and enforcing access controls. Without the decryption key, the attacker has no access to this data.

Data should be encrypted at rest and in transit. Additionally, the organization should implement a strong key management system based on industry-standard secret sharing algorithms to ensure the securing of encryption and decryption keys.

In some cases, encryption may not be an option, such as when data must be used by untrusted devices or users. In these scenarios, an organization may be able to use tokenization, masking, and similar techniques to limit the risk that sensitive data will be exposed to an unauthorized user.

Establish Proactive Detection & Response

Being proactive about security ensures that organizations have the tools and processes that they need precisely when they’re needed. This includes every stage of the incident management process, from initial detection through final response.

Implement AI-powered network monitoring

Artificial intelligence (AI) is well-suited for identifying anomalies and threats to sensitive data. AI-powered network monitoring tools can more rapidly identify hidden or polymorphic threats in normal network traffic. Some capabilities of AI for network monitoring include:

• Identifying anomalous traffic flows, such as data exfiltration or malware command and control (C2) traffic.
• Performing user and entity behavioral analytics (UEBA) to detect anomalous or malicious actions.
• Monitoring honeypots and honeynets to observe attacker tools and techniques. 

Integrate security tools for full visibility

Many organizations are reliant on an array of point security products designed to provide specific features and functionality. However, this approach creates fragmented security architecture since each tool has its own dataset, alerts, etc. Identifying and managing advanced threats require visibility and control across multiple point products, and this fragmented approach makes this very challenging.

SASE, SIEM, and XDR are tools that increase the visibility of security across enterprise networks. While SASE converges multiple security technologies into a single cloud-delivered service, SIEM and XDR enable organizations to correlate security events and alerts from multiple tools within their environments. Organizations should also look for security tools that use standardized data formats or expose APIs to more easily integrate standalone solutions.

Develop an incident response playbook

During a security incident, a rapid, effective response is essential to minimize the impact and cost of a security incident. To accomplish this, an organization should prepare a security plan in advance that includes:

• Clear definitions of roles and responsibilities.
• Plans to communicate information to key stakeholders.
• Containment steps for known and zero-day threats.
• Investigation and remediation best practices.

The members of the incident response team should be pre-defined and highly familiar with this plan. The organization can promote this via regular practice sessions, ranging from tabletop exercises to more in-depth and realistic red and blue team exercises.

Retain full packet capture data for investigations

Identifying and investigating a cybersecurity incident requires access to data. If an organization has already discarded network traffic data, threat hunting and forensic analysis become much more difficult, if not impossible.

The organization should define a retention policy for full packet captures and other network data. For example, the company may choose 30-90 days for packet captures and six months or more for network flows. This provides a balance between access to data and storage efficiency. When defining retention periods, it’s also important to consider regulatory compliance. Depending on the industry, retention policies for network traffic flow may fall within scope and must be addressed.

Adopt a Zero Trust Mindset

The zero trust security model attempts to improve security by eliminating implicit trust in an organization’s security architecture. Adopting zero trust principles is advisable not just for an organization’s cybersecurity requirements but also for regulatory compliance.

Never trust, always verify

“Never Trust” is a key principle of the zero trust security model. With this assumption, an organization should explicitly verify every request for access to corporate assets.

A zero trust architecture is built around microsegmentation, which creates trust boundaries by dividing the network into smaller, more secure segments based on specific access requirements for data within them. These boundaries allow organizations to impose access controls, ensuring that every request is authorized based on least privilege access controls that eliminate excessive permissions.

Implement risk-based conditional access policies

One-size-fits-all authentication is a poor blend of usability and security. It risks providing inappropriate permissions for all access requests.

Risk-based conditional access policies consider factors such as the user’s role, device security posture, device sensitivity, and other factors when making an access determination. Based on this, the system can automatically determine whether additional authentication is required and limit access accordingly.

Secure all types of identities

Identity management is about more than just employees. Partners, customers, applications, and devices have identities and take actions within an organization’s network environment. When managing identities, it’s important to consider all of these and ensure complete visibility and control. Identity management best practices include monitoring and managing privileged access and implementing consolidated identity and access management (IAM) across on-prem and multi-cloud environments.

Engage and Educate Employees

Employees are commonly seen as a company’s biggest security weakness, but they can also be a huge asset for corporate cybersecurity and data security. Educating employees on security best practices and encouraging security advocacy can dramatically speed up incident detection and reduce insider risk.

Make security engaging and personal

Tedious security training runs the risk that employees will ignore it or forget what they have learned. Protecting the company against human error and other internal threats requires more than just slide-based training.

To improve retention, link risks and best practices to users’ personal lives and families, providing information that can also be used outside the office. Companies can also make training more fun via gamification, offering simple prizes and encouraging friendly competition.

Require role-based training for developers and IT

Different employees face varying security risks. Within many enterprises, the employees that can benefit most from targeted training are developers and IT personnel.

Training developers on secure coding practices, cloud security risks, container hardening, and other specialized topics helps the organization reduce the risk of exploitable vulnerabilities within its production systems. Developers can also benefit from code reviews and retrospectives designed to explore identified vulnerabilities and how to avoid them.

Empower employees to be security advocates

Companies have limited IT and security resources, and often employees will go to their direct colleagues for advice rather than contacting IT. This can increase the risk of shadow IT if colleagues recommend using unapproved solutions or circumventing security controls.

Organizations can address these risks by creating a security champions program and encouraging users to be security advocates. All employees should receive security awareness training and have easy access to resources regarding best practices and how to report potential incidents. The company can also provide special recognition to those who go above and beyond, and provide resources and specialized training for those interested in being security champions within their teams.

Leverage Outside Expertise

The cybersecurity industry is experiencing a skills gap, and companies often struggle to find the cybersecurity expertise that they need. Working with external providers can help to address this issue and provide access to specialist knowledge on an as-needed basis.

Augment your team with managed security services

Managed security services provide organizations with access to resources and expertise that are difficult, expensive, or inefficient to maintain in-house. For example, an organization may need 24/7 SOC monitoring to protect against threats but lack the resources to maintain its own round-the-clock SOC operation.

Managed security services provide access to SOC monitoring, incident response, threat hunting, and other key functions while taking advantage of economies of scale. Additionally, an organization gains access to specialized expertise in cloud, OT/IoT, threat intelligence, and more.

Participate in information-sharing groups

Many cyberattack campaigns target entire industries, regions, or businesses of a particular size. By collaborating and sharing information, companies can gain insight into emerging threats and best practices for managing them.

Organizations can access this information in various ways. Subscribing to threat intelligence feeds provides IoCs and other data on new malware and attacks. Joining Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs) offers access to industry-specific groups for disseminating useful information. Companies can also join a local InfraGard chapter to collaborate with the FBI and their peers.

Validate your program with third-party audits and pen tests

Third-party audits and penetration tests are the gold standard for evaluating the effectiveness of an organization’s security architecture. While internal testing is valuable, it may not find everything due to organizational blind spots, gaps in security expertise, or a desire to have a clean report.

Third-party audits can provide an objective, more comprehensive evaluation of an organization’s security controls and detection capabilities. Additionally, these audits are often necessary to satisfy customer requirements and comply with applicable regulations.

Network Security with Cato Networks

Network security is Cato’s specialty. Cato SASE Cloud offers converged, cloud-native security for comprehensive visibility and controls across on-prem and cloud environments. Our managed services also help companies make the most of their lean security teams and ensure that corporate networks are protected by state-of-the-art security technology and real-time threat intelligence.