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Learn what firewall policy drift is, why rules move away from approved intent, and how to detect, remediate, and prevent drift across hybrid networks. What is firewall policy drift and how do you prevent it? ---- ------- Schedule a Demo Select a size ----- Get the latest insights from the experts Choose a better way to manage your network

Explore Algosec's customer success stories to see how organizations worldwide improve security, compliance, and efficiency with our solutions. Discovery Streamlines Firewall Audits And Simplifies The Change Workflow Organization Discovery Industry Financial Services Headquarters Johannesberg, South Africa Download case study Share Customer
success stories "With AlgoSec we can now get, in a click of a button, what took two to three weeks per firewall to produce manually" Background Discovery Limited is a South African-founded financial services organization that operates in the healthcare, life assurance, short-term insurance, savings and investment products and wellness markets. Founded in 1992, Discovery was guided by a clear core purpose — to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives. Underpinning this core purpose is the belief that through innovation, Discovery can be a powerful market disruptor. The company, with headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa, has expanded its operations globally and currently serves over 4.4 million clients across South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, China, Singapore and Australia.Operating in the highly regulated insurance and health sectors, Discovery monitors its compliance with international privacy laws and security criteria, includingPCI-DSS globally, Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA in the US, the Data Protection Act in the UK, and South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act. Challenge During its early years, the company managed its firewalls through an internally developed, legacy system which offered very limited visibility into the change request process.“We grew faster than anyone expected,” says Marc Silver, Security Manager at Discovery. “We needed better visibility into what changes were requested to which firewall, for what business need and also to ensure proper risk analysis.”Discovery’s growth necessitated a rapid increase in the number of firewalls deployed, and the corresponding ruleset sizes. The time required to audit them grew by orders of magnitude, ultimately taking up to three weeks per firewall. The IT Security team of four engineers recognized that it needed a fresh approach to manage risk and ensure compliance. Solution Discovery chose the AlgoSec Security Management Solution to deliver automated, comprehensive firewall operations, risk analysis and change management. Silver states that compared to AlgoSec’s competitors, “AlgoSec has a more tightly integrated change control, and is easier to manage. Another big advantage is how it finds unused rules and recommends rule consolidations,” says Silver.AlgoSec’s integration with Request Tracker (RT) change management system was also important in Discovery’s selection of a security management solution. “We use RT for our internal ticketing system, and the stability of AlgoSec’s integration with RT met our requirements. AlgoSec’s visual workflow is clear, easy to understand and more mature than the others we evaluated,” adds Silver. Results Since implementing AlgoSec, Discovery has found its security audits running more effectively. Discovery relies on AlgoSec’s built-in compliance reports to address Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and other national and international regulatory requirements. “Every year internal auditors would take our entire rulesets for each firewall pair and tell us where we needed to make improvements. AlgoSec now allows us to submit an automated report to our auditing team. It tells them what our security state is, and what needs to be remediated. The total process used to take three months. Now, in a click of a button, we can get what took two to three weeks per firewall to produce manually,” says Silver.Discovery has also found an unexpected advantage: “AlgoSec tells us what rules are in use and what rules are not. For one firewall, we were able to remove 30,000 rules. A firewall with 500,000 rules isn’t going to cope as well as one with 100,000 rules. By optimizing our devices, AlgoSec saves us money in the long term by enabling us to delay upgrading to a larger firewall,” adds Silver.In conclusion, Silver states that “Now we can see what is and isn’t happening in our security system. It has made a much bigger impact than we thought it would. With AlgoSec’s policy optimization, and the time we save on compliance, AlgoSec has given us a much stronger competitive edge than we had six months ago.” Schedule time with one of our experts

Enhance your network security with application segmentation solutions from Guardicore and AlgoSec, providing advanced visibility and control to protect critical assets. Application segmentation: Guardicore and AlgoSec Stronger together Guardicore is a security platform that creates human-readable views of your computing infrastructure. Guardicore extends security analytics and policy to multi-cloud apps by using behavior and attribute-driven micro-segmentation policy generation and enforcement. It reduces complexity by working consistently across any environment, reduces risk by enabling granular micro-segmentation policies, and enables innovation by integrating security into the DevOps and IT automation workflows without requiring application changes. Guardicore offers complete workload protection over users and endpoints, networks, including network ADCs, and application workloads, both on-premises and in the cloud. However, relying on Guardicore alone does not enable infrastructure policy enforcement over your firewalls, SDN and cloud security controls. Schedule a Demo Enforcing micro-segmentation throughout your entire network Organizations need consistent segmentation policies, across application workloads and infrastructure. Guardicore enforces micro-segmentation policies over your workloads but not on the rest of your network. AlgoSec extends the segmentation policy originating from Guardicore to the rest of your network — cloud, SDN and on-premises technologies. Get a Demo Schedule a Demo Effectively managing risk, vulnerabilities, and compliance A micro-segmentation project cannot be successful without managing risk, vulnerabilities, and compliance in the context of affected business applications. A successful micro-segmentation strategy requires a clear understanding of what business applications map to which security rules. By integrating Guardicore with AlgoSec, the AlgoSec AppViz addon discovers, identifies, and maps business applications, ensuring visibility of the network connectivity flows associated with each business application. This provides critical information regarding the firewalls and firewall rules supporting each connectivity flow. It is important to understand what business applications are impacted when evaluating the risk and compliance state of an organization’s network segmentation policy. With AlgoSec, you can prioritize vulnerability and patches based on the affected applications. You can view aggregated information about the network security risks and vulnerabilities relevant to each business application. AlgoSec’s AppViz provides a concise, human-readable view into business application connectivity, including: Automated application architecture Security governance zone overlay and diagram Optimized business application flows Automated mapping of business applications to downstream device changes Schedule a Demo Why integrate Guardicore with AlgoSec? Streamlined and consistent network security policy management across your entire hybrid network environment. Visibility into all network security policies across your entire hybrid network environment. Extend implementation of micro-segmentation projects to legacy and appliance-based environments, as well as hybrid networks across the on-premises and public cloud environment. Ensure consistency of segmentation policies and labeling, while avoiding duplication, across your entire network. Optimize and present Guardicore-enforced policies to non-technical business application owners Make changes and secure your entire network environment within minutes. Let's start your journey to our business-centric network security. Schedule a Demo Select a size Stronger together Enforcing micro-segmentation throughout your entire network Effectively managing risk, vulnerabilities, and compliance Why integrate Guardicore with AlgoSec? Get the latest insights from the experts Choose a better way to manage your network

Ensure your network security is up to par with a comprehensive firewall audit checklist. Review and optimize security policy rules to prevent vulnerabilities. Firewall audit checklist for security policy rules review Ensuring continuous compliance More regulations and standards relating to information security, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and ISO 27001, have forced enterprises to put more emphasis—in terms of time and money—on compliance and the regular and ad hoc auditing of security policies and controls. While regulatory and internal audits cover a broad range of security checks, the firewall is featured prominently since it is the first and main line of defense between the public and the corporate network. The number of enterprises that are not affected by regulations is shrinking. But even if you do not have to comply with specific government or industrial regulations and security standards, it is now commonplace to conduct regular, thorough audits of your firewalls. Not only do these audits ensure that your firewall configurations and rules meet the proper requirements of external regulations or internal security policy, but these audits can also play a critical role in reducing risk and actually improve firewall performance by optimizing the firewall rule base. In today’s complex, multi-vendor network environments, typically including tens or hundreds of firewalls running thousands of rules, completed a manual security audit now borders on the impossible. Conducting the audit process manually, firewall administrators must rely on their own experience and expertise—which can vary greatly across organizations—to determine if a given firewall rule should or should not be included in the configuration file. Furthermore, documentation of current rules and their evolution of changes is usually lacking. The time and resources required to find, organize and pour through all of the firewall rules to determine the level of compliance significantly impacts IT staff. As networks grow in complexity, auditing becomes more cumbersome. Manual processes cannot keep up. Automating the firewall audit process is crucial as compliance must be continuous, not simply at a point in time. The firewall audit process is arduous. Each new rule must pre-analyzed and simulated before it can be implemented. A full and accurate audit log of each change must be maintained. Today’s security staffs now find that being audit-ready without automation is impractical if not virtually impossible. It’s time to look to automation along with the establishment of auditing best practices to maintain continuous compliance. Below, we share a proven checklist of six best practices for a firewall audits based on AlgoSec’s extensive experience in consulting with some of the largest global organizations and auditors who deal with firewall audit, optimization and change management processes and procedures. While this is not an exhaustive list that every organization must follow, it provides guidance on some critical areas to cover when conducting a firewall audit. FIGURE 1: Overview of the Recommended Firewall Audit Process Get a Demo Schedule a Demo Gather key information prior to starting the audit An audit has little chance of success without visibility into the network, including software, hardware, policies and risks. The following are examples of the key information required to plan the audit work: Copies of relevant security policies Access to firewall logs that can be analyzed against the firewall rule base to understand which rules are actually being used An accurate diagram of the current network and firewall topologies Reports and documents from previous audits, including firewall rules, objects and policy revisions Identification of all Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Virtual Private Networks (VPN) All relevant firewall vendor information including OS version, latest patches and default configuration Understanding all the key servers and information repositories in the network and the value of each Once you have gathered this information, how are you going to aggregate it and storing it? Trying to track compliance on spreadsheets is a surefire way to make the audit process painful, tedious and time-consuming. Instead of spreadsheets, the auditor needs to document, store and consolidate this vital information in a way that enables collaboration with IT counterparts. With this convenience access, auditors you can start reviewing policies and procedures and tracking their effectiveness in terms of compliance, operational efficiency and risk mitigation. Schedule a Demo Review the change management process A good change management process is essential to ensure proper execution and traceability of firewall changes as well as for sustainability over time to ensure compliance continuously. Poor documentation of changes, including why each change is needed, who authorized the change, etc. and poor validation of the impact on the network of each change are two of the most common problems when it comes to change control. Review the procedures for rule-base change management. Just a few key questions to review include:Are requested changes going through proper approvals? Are changes being implemented by authorized personnel? Are changes being tested? Are changes being documented per regulatory and/ or internal policy requirements? Each rule should have a comment that includes the change ID of the request and the name/initials of the person who implemented the change. Is there an expiration date for the change? Determine if there is a formal and controlled process in place to request, review, approve and implement firewall changes. This process should include at least the following:Business purpose for a change request Duration (time period) for new/modified rule Assessment of the potential risks associated with the new/modified rule Formal approvals for new/modified rule Assignment to proper administrator for implementation Verification that change has been tested and implemented correctly Determine whether all of the changes have been authorized and flag unauthorized rule changes for further investigation. Determine if real-time monitoring of changes to a firewall are enabled and if access to rul Schedule a Demo Audit the firewall’s physical and OS security It is important to be certain as to each firewall’s physical and software security to protect against the most fundamental types of cyberattack. Ensure that firewall and management servers are physically secured with controlled access. Ensure that there is a current list of authorized personnel permitted to access the firewall server rooms. Verify that all appropriate vendor patches and updates have been applied. Ensure that the operating system passes common hardening checklists. Review the procedures used for device administration. Schedule a Demo Cleanup and optimize the rule base Removing firewall clutter and optimizing the rule base can greatly improve IT productivity and firewall performance. Additionally, optimizing firewall rules can significantly reduce a lot of unnecessary overhead in the audit process. Delete covered rules that are effectively useless. Delete or disable expired and unused rules and objects. Identify disabled, time-inactive and unused rules that are candidates for removal. Evaluate the order of firewall rules for effectiveness and performance. Remove unused connections, including source/ destination/service routes, that are not in use. Detect similar rules that can be consolidated into a single rule. Identify overly permissive rules by analyzing the actual policy usage against firewall logs. Tune these rules as appropriate for policy and actual use scenarios. Analyze VPN parameters to identify unused users, unattached users, expired users, users about to expire, unused groups, unattached groups and expired groups. Enforce object-naming conventions. Document rules, objects and policy revisions for future reference. Schedule a Demo Conduct a risk assessment and remediate issues Essential for any firewall audit, a comprehensive risk assessment will identify risky rules and ensure that rules are compliant with internal policies and relevant standards and regulations. Identify any and all potentially “risky” rules, based on industry standards and best practices, and prioritize them by severity. What is “risky” can be different for each organization depending on the network and the level of acceptable risk, but there are many frameworks and standards you can leverage that provide a good reference point. A few things to look for and validate include: Are there firewall rules that violate your corporate security policy? Are there any firewall rules with “ANY” in the source, destination, service/protocol, application or user fields, and with a permissive action? Are there rules that allow risky services from your DMZ to your internal network? Are there rules that allow risky services inbound from the Internet? Are there rules that allow risky services outbound to the Internet? Are there rules that allow direct traffic from the Internet to the internal network (not the DMZ)? Are there any rules that allow traffic from the Internet to sensitive servers, networks, devices or databases? Analyze firewall rules and configurations against relevant regulatory and/or industry standards such as PCI-DSS, SOX, ISO 27001, NERC CIP, Basel-II, FISMA and J-SOX, as well as corporate policies that define baseline hardware and software configurations to which devices must adhere (See Figure 4 on page 9). Document and assign an action plan for remediation of risks and compliance exceptions found in risk analysis. Verify that remediation efforts and any rule changes have been completed correctly. Track and document that remediation efforts are completed. Schedule a Demo Ongoing audits Upon successful firewall and security device auditing, verifying secure configuration, proper steps must be put in place to ensure continuous compliance. Ensure that a process is established for continuous auditing of firewalls. Consider replacing error-prone manual tasks with automated analysis and reporting. Ensure that all audit procedures are properly documented, providing a complete audit trail of all firewall management activities. Make sure that a robust firewall-change workflow is in place to sustain compliance over time.This repeats Audit Checklist item #2 because is necessary to ensure continuous compliance, i.e., compliance might be achieved now, but in a month, the organization might once again be out of compliance. Ensure that there is an alerting system in place for significant events or activities, such as changes in certain rules or the discovery of a new, high severity risk in the policy. Schedule a Demo Automating firewall compliance audits with AlgoSec When it comes to compliance, the firewall policy management solution must have the breadth and depth to automatically generate detailed reports for multiple regulations and standards. It also must support multiple firewalls and related security devices. By combining this firewall audit checklist with the AlgoSec Security Management Solution, organizations can significantly improve their security posture and reduce the pain of ensuring compliance with regulations, industry standards and corporate policies. Furthermore, they can ensure compliance continuously without spending significant resources wasting time and effort on complex security policies on a regular basis. Let’s go back through the checklist and look at a few examples of how AlgoSec can help. Gain visibility of network policies and their changes AlgoSec enables you to gather the key information needed to start the audit process. By generating a dynamic, interactive network map AlgoSec visualizes and helps you analyze complex networks. (See Figure 2.) You can view routing tables and effectively detect interfaces, subnets and zones. Additionally, AlgoSec provides you with visibility of all changes to your network security policies in real-time and creates detailed firewall audit reports to help approvers make informed decisions about changes that affect risk or compliance levels. Lastly, AlgoSec discovers all the business applications that run on your network and each of their associated connectivity flows. FIGURE 2: AlgoSec provides network topology awareness with a map that provides visibility of all firewalls and routers including all relevant interfaces, subnets and zones, and the ability to drill down to specific information about each device. Understand the firewall changes in your network and automate the process AlgoSec intelligently automates the security-policy change workflow, dramatically cutting the time required to process firewall changes, increasing accuracy and accountability, enforcing compliance and mitigating risk. In addition, AlgoSec provides flexible workflows and templates to help you manage change requests and tailor processes to your business needs. Clean up and optimize your rule base AlgoSec enables you to optimize and clean up cluttered policies with actionable recommendations to: Consolidate similar rules. Discover and remove unused rules and objects (See Figure 3). Identify and remove shadowed, duplicate, and expired rules. Reorder rules for optimal firewall performance while retaining policy logic. Tighten overly permissive rules based on actual usage patterns. Not only does this help you improve the performance and extend the life of your firewalls, it also saves time when it comes to troubleshooting issues and IT audits. Plus, it creates a time savings during rule recertification, as each application is associated with multiple connectivity needs requiring multiple firewall rules. FIGURE 3: Unused rules that AlgoSec has identified for removal. Conduct a risk assessment and remediate issues AlgoSec enables you to instantly discover and prioritize all risks and potentially risky rules in the firewall policy, leveraging the largest risk knowledgebase available. The knowledgebase includes industry regulations, best practices and customizable corporate security policies. AlgoSec assigns and tracks a security rating for each device and group of devices to help you to quickly pinpoint devices that require attention and to measure the effectiveness of a security policy over time. FIGURE 4: AlgoSec identifies and prioritizes risky rules based on industry standards and frameworks and provides detailed information of source, destination, service, as well as user and application when analyzing next-generation firewalls. Out-of-the-box compliance reports AlgoSec ensures continuous compliance and instantly provides you with a view of your firewall compliance status by automatically generating reports for industry regulations, including Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), GDPR, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (J-SOX, also known as Japan-SOX), North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP), and International Organization for Standardization (ISO 20071). If the network security policy doesn’t adhere to regulatory or corporate standards, the reports identify the exact rules and devices that cause gaps in compliance. A single report provides visibility into risk and compliance associated with a group of devices. FIGURE 5: PCI DSS firewall compliance report automatically generated by AlgoSec. Schedule a Demo Conclusion Ensuring and proving compliance typically require significant organizational resources and budget. With the growing litany of regulations, the cost and time involved in the audit process is increasing rapidly. Armed with the firewall audit checklist and with the AlgoSec security policy management solution you can: Reduce the time required for an audit — Manual reviews can take a significant amount of time to produce a report for each firewall in the network. AlgoSec aggregates data across a defined group of firewalls and devices for a unified compliance view, doing away with running reports for each device, thereby saving a tremendous amount of time and effort that is wasted on collating individual device reports. AlgoSec enables you to produce a report in minutes, reducing time and effort by as much as 80%. Improve compliance while reducing costs — As the auditor’s time to gather pertinent information and analyze the network security status is reduced, the total cost of the audit decreases substantially. AlgoSec facilitates the remediation of non-compliant items by providing actionable information that further reduces the time to re- establish a compliant state. Schedule a Demo Select a size Ensuring continuous compliance Gather key information prior to starting the audit Review the change management process Audit the firewall’s physical and OS security Cleanup and optimize the rule base Conduct a risk assessment and remediate issues Ongoing audits Automating firewall compliance audits with AlgoSec Conclusion Get the latest insights from the experts Choose a better way to manage your network

Understand the network security policy management lifecycle, from creation to implementation and continuous review, ensuring optimal network protection and compliance. The network security policy management lifecycle ---- ------- Schedule a Demo Select a size ----- Get the latest insights from the experts Choose a better way to manage your network

Understand HIPAA network compliance requirements. Learn how to safeguard patient data with robust network security measures and ensure compliance with HIPAA regulations. HIPAA network compliance & security requirements explained ---- ------- Schedule a Demo Select a size ----- Get the latest insights from the experts Use these six best practices to simplify compliance and risk mitigation with the AlgoSec platform White paper Learn how AlgoSec can help you pass PCI-DSS Audits and ensure continuous compliance Solution overview See how this customer improved compliance readiness and risk management with AlgoSec Case study Choose a better way to manage your network

Security Policy Management with Professor Wool Managing Business Application Connectivity Managing Business Application Connectivity is a whiteboard-style series of lessons that examine the challenges of and provide technical tips for provisioning and decommissioning application connectivity across enterprise networks and data centers. Lesson 1 In this lesson, Professor Wool examines the challenges of managing data center applications and their connectivity requirements. Professor Wool also offers tips for bridging the gap between application owners and network and security teams - to ensure faster, more secure deployment, maintenance and decommissioning of critical applications. Examining the Need for Application-Centric Security Policy Management Watch Lesson 2 In this lesson, Professor Wool discusses how to look at and prioritize network security vulnerabilities in a new way - from the perspective of the business applications in your data center. How to Prioritize Risk from the Business Perspective Watch Lesson 3 In this lesson, Professor Wool examines how to leverage firewall rules for discovering the connectivity requirements of data center applications. Tips to Discover Business Application Connectivity Requirements Watch Lesson 4 In this lesson, Professor Wool examines the challenges of decommissioning business applications and offers recommendations for improving security without impacting network operations by removing firewall rules that are no longer in use. Tips for Secure Decommissioning of Business Applications Watch Lesson 5 How to Automatically Identify Business Application Connectivity Needs from Network Traffic Watch Lesson 6 The Different Data Sources for Application Connectivity Discovery Watch Lesson 7 How to Aggregate Network Flows Into Application Flows Watch Lesson 8 The Benefits of Mapping Firewall Rules to Business Applications Watch Have a Question for Professor Wool? Ask him now Choose a better way to manage your network Choose a better way to manage your network Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

Learn which cloud security services to consider first, how to prioritize them, and how to govern cloud access, policy changes, and audit evidence What cloud security services should your business consider? What are cloud security services and how should organizations choose the right ones? Choosing cloud security services often starts with a messy reality. A business may already have SaaS applications, cloud workloads, security groups, customer data in storage buckets, and an audit request asking who approved access. The first decision is not which tool to buy. It is what needs protection, who owns each control, and which risks change fastest. Cloud security services are the tools, platforms, processes, and managed capabilities that protect cloud identities, data, workloads, applications, networks, configurations, logs, and compliance evidence. Evaluate identity and access management, cloud network and policy management, posture management, workload protection, data protection, monitoring and response, application and API security, and audit evidence. The order depends on data sensitivity, applications, regulatory scope, staffing, cloud maturity, and change volume. Schedule a Demo Why choosing cloud security services gets messy Cloud security is not one category. It is a set of responsibilities spread across cloud providers, security teams, platform teams, developers, application owners, and sometimes managed service providers. Native tools can cover important controls inside one cloud. Third-party platforms can help when environments span cloud accounts, subscriptions, projects, data centers, and business units. Managed services can add people and process when internal coverage is limited. The confusion usually shows up in handoffs. Developers may create security groups as part of a deployment. A network team may own cloud firewalls and hybrid connectivity. A compliance team may need evidence that explains why access exists and who approved it. Without a clear service model, teams can buy overlapping tools while still missing ownership, policy drift, stale rules, and exception tracking. Schedule a Demo Start with what the business needs to protect Before comparing services, map the environment in plain language. Which applications support revenue, operations, payroll, customer portals, or regulated data? Which identities can change cloud resources? Which workloads are internet-facing? Which logs would the team need during an investigation? This keeps the budget tied to risk management instead of acronym collection. A company running mostly SaaS may need identity controls, SaaS governance, data protection, and managed monitoring first. A software company running Kubernetes, public APIs, and several cloud accounts may need workload, API, entitlement, and cloud network policy services earlier. Schedule a Demo Cloud security service categories to evaluate The table below is a practical starting point. Use it to match services to risks already visible in the business. Cloud security service category What it helps protect Prioritize when Identity and access management (IAM) Users, admins, service accounts, SSO, MFA, least privilege Cloud access is expanding or privileged roles are unclear Cloud network and policy management Cloud firewalls, security groups, NSGs, VPC firewall rules, segmentation, access paths Teams manage hybrid connectivity, frequent changes, broad rules, or audit questions Posture and configuration management (CSPM) Misconfigurations, exposed assets, risky settings, compliance mappings The business has many accounts, regions, projects, or regulated workloads Workload and container protection (CWPP and CNAPP) Virtual machines, containers, Kubernetes, images, runtime behavior, vulnerabilities Applications run in cloud infrastructure or containers Data protection and key management Sensitive data, encryption keys, secrets, DLP, retention, backup, recovery Cloud stores customer, financial, health, regulated, or intellectual property data Monitoring, detection, and response Logs, alerts, incidents, SIEM or XDR integrations, managed detection and response (MDR) The team needs 24/7 visibility or limited internal coverage Application and API security Web applications, APIs, web application firewall (WAF), gateways, secure development checks The business exposes customer portals, APIs, or public applications SaaS and entitlement governance (CASB and CIEM) Cloud application use, SaaS access, entitlements, excessive permissions Users adopt many cloud apps or permissions expand quickly Some acronyms overlap. Cloud security posture management, or CSPM, focuses on misconfigurations and posture. Cloud workload protection platforms, or CWPPs, focus on workloads. Cloud-native application protection platforms, or CNAPPs, combine several cloud-native security capabilities. A cloud access security broker, or CASB, helps govern SaaS use. Cloud infrastructure entitlement management, or CIEM, focuses on excessive permissions. Schedule a Demo Which services should come first? Identity usually comes first because identities decide who can read data, change infrastructure, create access paths, and approve exceptions. In practice, this means enforcing MFA, removing unused accounts, reviewing service accounts, and limiting privileged roles before the environment becomes harder to unwind. After identity, most teams need visibility. Logging, asset inventory, and posture checks show what exists, who owns it, how it is exposed, and whether it follows policy. Then focus on sensitive data, workload exposure, and network paths. A public storage bucket, over-permissive role, public API, or broad security group can change the priority quickly. For regulated environments, build evidence into the process early. It is easier to preserve logs, approvals, exceptions, and change history as work happens than to reconstruct them during an audit. That discipline also reduces manual investigation and helps teams avoid overlapping controls before ownership is clear. Schedule a Demo Native tools, third-party platforms, or managed services? Native cloud provider security tools can be a good starting point when the environment is focused, ownership is clear, and the team has time to operate them. They also understand provider-specific controls such as IAM roles, logging services, security groups, network security groups, and cloud-native firewalls. Third-party platforms become more important when the business runs hybrid or multi-cloud environments, has frequent access changes, or needs consistent reporting across teams. Managed services can help when staffing is the constraint. A small security team may use managed detection and response for monitoring while keeping identity, network policy, and data decisions internally governed. Schedule a Demo Where cloud network policy management fits Cloud network policy is easy to create and hard to keep clean. A developer may open a security group during testing. A cloud team may add a temporary migration exception. A network team may maintain a cloud firewall rule for an application dependency nobody has documented recently. Months later, the access still works, but the reason is hard to prove. That is why network security management and cloud policy governance deserve a place in the service plan. Teams need to understand which cloud firewalls, security groups, NSGs, and VPC firewall rules allow traffic, which application depends on it, who owns the access, and what would happen if it changed. In a hybrid environment, cleanup and change governance are tied together. Firewall policy cleanup can identify stale or overly broad access, but teams still need application context before removing or narrowing a path. Security policy change management helps keep approvals, impact analysis, rollback notes, and audit evidence connected to the change request. Application context matters. Application connectivity management helps teams map dependencies before policy changes affect a business service. It also supports application-centric rule recertification, where application owners can confirm whether access is still required and whether specific flows should be approved, changed, or removed. That gives teams clearer evidence around ownership, business justification, review decisions, and access changes. Schedule a Demo How AlgoSec Horizon fits into the process AlgoSec Horizon helps security, network, and cloud teams bring application-centric policy context, governance, and audit evidence into cloud security decisions across hybrid environments. In this process, teams can understand which applications and connectivity flows depend on security policies, so changes can be reviewed with clearer ownership, risk, approval, and audit context. That platform view matters in hybrid cloud security management , where a policy decision is rarely isolated. A cloud firewall rule may support an application dependency. A security group cleanup request may need owner review. A compliance request may need evidence showing who approved access and why it is still needed. AlgoSec Horizon complements broader cloud-native security services by helping teams connect application context, security policy visibility, risk analysis, governed change processes, and compliance-ready evidence across hybrid networks. For businesses evaluating cloud security services, that means cloud network policy management can be part of the operating model, not a late cleanup task after policies have drifted. Schedule a Demo Frequently asked questions What cloud security services should a small business prioritize first? A small business should usually start with identity controls, backups, logging, data protection, basic posture checks, and managed monitoring. The order depends on SaaS use, cloud infrastructure, regulated data, and public-facing applications. Are native cloud provider security tools enough? They can be enough for focused environments with clear ownership and limited change. Hybrid, multi-cloud, regulated, or high-change environments often need broader governance, reporting, and policy visibility across tools and teams. What is the difference between CSPM, CWPP, CNAPP, CASB, and CIEM? CSPM finds posture and configuration issues. CWPP focuses on workloads such as virtual machines, containers, and Kubernetes. CNAPP combines several cloud-native protection capabilities. CASB governs SaaS and cloud application use. CIEM focuses on cloud entitlements and excessive permissions. Which cloud security services help with compliance? Compliance-focused cloud programs usually need identity governance, posture monitoring, log retention, data protection, change evidence, policy review, recovery records, and audit-ready reporting. Requirements vary by organization, industry, and framework, so qualified advisors should validate specific obligations. Schedule a Demo See how AlgoSec Horizon can help If your team is trying to govern cloud firewalls, security groups, application dependencies, policy changes, and audit evidence across hybrid networks, see how AlgoSec Horizon can help security teams gain application-centric visibility, manage policy changes with governance, and support audit readiness. Schedule a Demo Select a size What are cloud security services and how should organizations choose the right ones? Why choosing cloud security services gets messy Start with what the business needs to protect Cloud security service categories to evaluate Which services should come first? Native tools, third-party platforms, or managed services? Where cloud network policy management fits How AlgoSec Horizon fits into the process Frequently asked questions See how AlgoSec Horizon can help Get the latest insights from the experts Choose a better way to manage your network

Learn best practices for mastering network object management Webinars From chaos to control - overcoming 5 challenges of network object management Learn how to master network object management Join our free webinar on conquering 5 common network object management obstacles! Learn practical tips and strategies to simplify your network management process and boost efficiency. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to improve your network performance and minimize headaches. May 24, 2023 Kfir Tabak Product Manager Relevant resources Synchronized Object Management in a Multi-Vendor Environment Watch Video How to Structure Network Objects to Plan for Future Policy Growth Watch Video How to Manage Dynamic Objects in Cloud Environments Watch Video Choose a better way to manage your network Choose a better way to manage your network Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

AlgoSec products are sold through our worldwide network of channel partners Request a quote, contact sales or locate a Partner How to buy Request a quote Contact Sales Locate a Partner AWS Marketplace Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Send us a note Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* Long answer Send message