What do the castles of the past and networking devices have in common? Walls.
However, as attacks became more sophisticated, it quickly became obvious that a simple wall was no longer enough to fortify the castle, and moats were established to complement the walls and fend of attackers.
As attacks further evolved, insider abuse, open back-doors, and unnoticed cracks became a vector to successful attacks, overwhelming the once trusted walls.
Within this digital age, this wall is called a Firewall. It is no longer enough for your assets to be protected by a firewall. Innovation has forced us to configure this firewall against attackers and develop new tools and techniques to make the most of this wall.
Firewalls are the first line of defence, they monitor all incoming and outgoing network traffic, deciding whether to allow or block traffic. They establish a barrier between the internet and the trusted secured network. Firewall protection can decay over time, thousands of applications require several access rules for their operation, and this opens potential avenues of attack. Firewalls are often an overlooked part of security; administrators believe that setting up a firewall will magically protect the trusted internal networks. It should not be a set and forget exercise.
It is important to setup and continually manage firewall features and capability for optimal security, a one-off setup approach has proved to insufficient overtime. Managed firewall is a service which involves having constant and consistent specialists to continuously manage and utilise the firewall features and capabilities to the fullest, ensuring your wall is up to the highest standard. But as history as taught us, a solid wall is only the first piece of the puzzle which can be defeated with persistence and resilience. A managed firewall service also incorporates the ability to discover and respond to defeated defences in near real-time to ensure minimal loss.
Using advanced correlation of the logs generated from the carefully implemented firewall capabilities (such is an Intrusion Detection System (IDS), access logs and traffic logs), an additional layer of protection, in the form of visibility, detection and rapid response, ensures that adversary activities are detected and mitigated in a timely manner to ensure minimal or no losses.
Brace168 is an expert at implementing Managed Firewalls and IDS solutions to provide that extra layer of defence required to detect and mitigate threats. Brace168’s dedicated team of security engineers provide enhanced firewall capability implementation (defence) and SOC analysts work around the clock in our state-of-the-art Security Operation Centre to ensure that a potential breach of defences is detected and mitigated in real-time (detection and mitigation).
If it is one thing you take away from this article, it’s that history is bound to repeat itself. It has never been enough to secure assets with four walls. Neglecting the tools of network protection provides the easiest method of attack.
Whether it’s to consult us about your current Intrusion Detection System or implementing one from scratch, Brace168 is here to help, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.