Data Driven Compliance

Security has been a top concern for years, and the reasons for this focus are increasingly clear. Government agencies are being asked by the President and governing agencies to make changes that will protect the integrity of their network and the safety of the nation. Most recently, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) issued […]

Security has been a top concern for years, and the reasons for this focus are increasingly clear. Government agencies are being asked by the President and governing agencies to make changes that will protect the integrity of their network and the safety of the nation.

Most recently, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) issued Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 23-1. The BOD requires agencies to have a comprehensive accounting of what is in their networks. Given the size and complexity of agency networks, this is a challenging mandate to comply with. Most tools currently available cannot gather the required data in a timely manner, often taking several days to complete a scan that reaches all network endpoints. Even then these scans lack critical data required for an appropriately strong security posture.

It’s often said security is a journey not a destination; that’s also true of compliance. There are many elements, but the most important is accessible, actionable data. Forward Enterprise has several features that help agencies successfully comply with directives and enforce their security posture.

Knowledge-driven Security

Forward Enterprise helps agencies comply by using Forward Enterprise; security professionals can identify vulnerabilities before they become a threat. Because Forward Networks can scan your network multiple times per day without performance degradation, it delivers timely, actionable alerts to security professionals. In conjunction with third-party application integrations, the level of detail in alerts empowers engineers to remediate any errant configurations or known critical vulnerabilities before they cause an incident. The three most popular security use cases are:

Attack surface management enables engineers to determine the blast radius of a compromised host in a single mouse click. This feature also works with the snapshot functionality to “go back in time” and document the blast radius on a specific date.
Critical vulnerability management eliminates guesswork when responding to the thousands of CVEs issued each year. Forward Enterprise tracks the NIST known vulnerabilities and identifies which devices on the network are impacted using configuration, IOS, and features in use to present a prioritized remediation list. Integration with Rapid7 extends this capability to endpoints.
Security posture management for agencies using microsegmentation in their pursuit of a zero trust architecture, Forward Enterprise provides a vendor-agnostic at-a-glance visualization of full, partial, or zero connectivity between zones.

To learn how Forward Networks can help your agency comply with BOD 23-1 read our solution guide or book a private meeting where our federal technical experts will focus specifically on how to address your concerns.

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