We live in a connected world – thanks to the rise of new trends and concepts like Internet of Things (IoT) or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), enterprise networks can’t restrict themselves to a specific set of predefined devices. Hence, the number of devices that now exist on enterprise networks are rapidly multiplying.
Obviously, this would mean that the importance of network visibility has grown by multifold. Just a few years back, it was far simpler to get an outline of a business network, but courtesy to the ever-expanding number of devices that connect to business networks now, it is a whole new ball game. From a cybersecurity perspective, network visibility is extremely important – it is important to monitor what an enterprise is trying to secure.
How does network visibility help an enterprise? Here are some ways:
Identifying anomalies in network activity
Network visibility enables cybersecurity administrators to observe network activity. This can allow them to spot and benchmark patterns, leading to easy identification of anomalies. Normal activity is thus easily detected and anything which stands out can be sent for investigation.
User activity
Are employees following their information security policy seriously? Proper network visibility will provide answers to this question with detailed information on how employees are using confidential and sensitive data. Network administrators can also readily find out if their policies are being followed and if there are backdoors in the network.
Secure Remote Connectivity
A secure connection from an endpoint to the company’s network for its remote users is very important and a virtual private network (VPN) does just that. It also helps build site-to-site connections to ensure protected and seamless connectivity. Typically, Secure Sockets Layer or IPsec is used to verify the communication between the endpoint and the network.
Ease of use and operational benefits
A single centralized solution offering network visibility helps provide an easy snapshot to understand what is happening in an enterprise network. It allows for operational benefits by eliminating the need to have multiple security solutions to perform the task.
Sensitive assets
Network visibility allows administrators to understand their network’s weak points. What part of the network gets attacked the most and what kind of attack vectors are used? Through these trends, network administrators stay up-to-date on the everyday changes happening in a fairly massive enterprise network.
Seqrite’s Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution offers a one-stop solution for network visibility. UTM reduces security complexities by integrating key IT security features in one integrated network security product. The platform brings network security, management, backup and recovery of UTM data and many other critical network services together under a single unified umbrella, tailored to suit the complexity of emerging threat scenarios.
A few benefits of the UTM solution are:
- All traffic through the firewall is tracked and logged and pre-defined business rules are applied to block all threats and non-business traffic. This improves productivity and ensures security. The antivirus built into it scans all inbound and outbound traffic for malware at the gateway level. The IPS system can detect and prevent attacks from a wide range of DoS and DDoS attacks before they infiltrate the network.
- It validates and encrypts every IP packet of communication using Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) and NAT traversal. VPN compression, Multiple Subnet Support, and DNS Setting for PPTP Server as well as SSL VPN, Remote Access VPN, Site-to-Site VPN, dead peer detection are some of the other features of this tool to ensure secure remote connectivity.
- It includes mail antivirus and anti-spam as well as keyword blocking for emails and HTTP(S) traffic fortifying your email communication. Website category and custom web lists based filtering are also provided.
- It boasts of a revamped ISP load balance and failover feature including policy-based failover routing and automatic divert of data traffic from inactive ISP to active ISPs. IPv6, VLAN, USB Internet support for 3G/4G and NTP support, configurable LAN/WAN/DMZ ports, and Layer 2 bridging and link aggregation are also provided.
- A user-friendly web-based logging and reporting console gives a complete view of the network. Configurable scheduling of diagnostic tools and monitoring CPU/RAM/Disk usage with timely reports and alerts through SMS or email. Stronger access control with enhanced user/group bandwidth and quota management is also provided.
Seqrite UTM is a one-stop network security solution for your enterprise ensuring round-the-clock security for your network.
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