Ensuring network security is becoming only more crucial — and challenging — for large enterprises, as malicious actors seek to exploit any available security gap to infiltrate the network, steal data and launch their attacks. Adhering to network policy and ensuring devices remain in compliance is a critical step in preventing
security events. Although everyone understands the importance of maintaining compliance, config drift is present in almost every network, meaning most of us are
one ACL away from making
headlines that nobody wants.
The risk of noncompliant devices isn’t simply poor network hygiene; config drift puts the entire organization at risk of violating government regulations such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, FedRAMP, FISMA, and NIST. Violating these regulations can lead to significant fines, damage to the organization’s brand, and loss of customer trust.
Security teams try to inoculate against this risk by conducting regular compliance and security audits. Because today’s enterprise networks are incredibly complex, with tens of thousands of devices running billions of lines of config, this is not a straightforward undertaking.
Conducting audits to ensure that components like routers,
firewalls, load-balancers, and switches have up-to-date controls,
are configured appropriately, and don’t pose a compliance or
security risk, is a labor-intensive process that can take network
operations teams days, weeks, or even longer. Also, the potential
of overlooking a significant security issue, or even introducing
new risks, is high. And if the audit is prompted by a forensic
investigation, not moving fast enough could lead to serious and
costly consequences for the enterprise, its employees, and its
customers.
