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Understand how to achieve and maintain firewall compliance with ISO/IEC 27001. Learn key requirements, best practices, and how to strengthen your overall security posture. Firewall ISO compliance: ISO/IEC 27001 explained Introductory prologue IT organizations and those dealing with digital assets often face many information security challenges. They must protect sensitive data from unauthorized access, as a crack in security can result in unimaginable losses. To keep information security risks minimal and optimize protection for organizations, ISO/IEC 27001 compliance was designed. What is ISO/IEC 27001 compliance? How does it work, and why does it matter? Read on to uncover answers to all your questions and more in this guide. Schedule a Demo What Is ISO/IEC 27001? ISO/IEC 27001 is an internationally accepted standard for data security. It is one of the standards jointly published by the ISO (International Standardization Organization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) in 2015. ISO/IEC 27001 aims to provide organizations with a framework for information security management, thereby protecting digital assets. Implementing the standard helps organizations minimize and effectively manage information security risks, such as hacks, data leaks or theft, and cyber attacks. Digital assets like intellectual property, software, employee information, and personal data are often a target for malicious actors. And that’s why asset management is crucial to companies and digital service providers. It demonstrates that the certified organization’s information security system is efficient as it follows the best practice. Any ISO/IEC 27001-certified organization can display its certification online (e.g., on its website, social media platforms, etc.) and offline. As a result, they get the trust and respect they deserve from partners, investors, customers, and other organizations. Schedule a Demo Evolution of ISO/IEC 27001 The International Standardization Organization (ISO) is a global federation of national standards bodies established in 1947. It is a leading organization that develops standards for ensuring the security of business systems. Since its emergence, ISO has published several standards, such as: ISO 27000 – Information Security Management Systems ISO 22301 – Business Continuity ISO 14000 – Environmental Management System ISO 45001 – Occupational Health and Safety ISO 9000 – Quality Management System etc. Although ISO/IEC 27001 was officially published in 2005, ISO had been providing measures for protecting digital systems and information before then. The rapid spread of the internet in the 1990s gave rise to the need for data security to prevent sensitive data from getting into the wrong hands. ISO 27001 was the first standard among the ISO 27000 series of standards for cybersecurity. Since its release, the standard has undergone revisions to tackle new and evolving cyber threats in the industry. The first revision took place in October 2013, when new controls were introduced, and the total controls numbered up to 114. This version is referred to as ISO/IEC 27001:2013 version. The second and latest revision of ISO/ICE 27001 was published in 2022 and enumerates 93 controls grouped into four sections. This revision was initially referred to as ISO/IEC 27001:2022 but is now known as ISO 27001. Another notable development in the latest version is the change in title. The new version’s complete title is – ISO 27001 (i.e., ISO/IEC 27001:2022) Information Security, Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection. Schedule a Demo Business Benefits of ISO/IEC 27001 Achieving ISO/IEC 27001 certification offers organizations several business benefits, especially for service providers handling people’s sensitive financial and personal data. Examples of such organizations are insurance companies, banks, health organizations, and financial institutions. Some of the business benefits of ISO 27001 are: 1. It prevents financial penalties and losses from data breaches Organizations that do not comply with the global security standard are at great risk of a data breach. Data breaches often attract financial penalties and cause companies to lose significant amounts. By implementing the best network security practices, organizations can prevent unnecessary financial losses and record more significant revenue in the long run. 2. It protects and enhances a company’s reputation. Partners, investors, and customers often prefer companies with a good reputation for handling data. In fact, the World Economic Forum states that reputation affects a quarter of a company’s market value. ISO/IEC 27001 certification can help businesses with an existing reputation to preserve their image. Companies with a previous record of security challenges can enhance their reputation and earn the trust and respect of others by becoming certified too. 3. Wins new business and sharpens competitive edge Certified companies stand a better chance of winning new businesses and recording more sales and profits than their competitors. That’s because clients want to feel safe knowing their data enjoy maximum protection. Also, certain organizations must attain other certifications like GDPR, HIPAA, NIST, etc., before commencing operation. And having ISO certification makes it easier to achieve such requirements. One major indicator that an organization can be trusted for security management is acquiring a worldwide certification. It sharpens its competitive advantage and propels the brand way ahead of others. 4. Improves structure and focus As businesses expand, new responsibilities arise, and it can be challenging to determine who should be responsible for what. But with ISO 27001 compliance, companies will have a clear structure to mirror. From authentication to network traffic management, the standard has an outlined structure that companies can apply to establish robust operations security. As a result, they can tackle rising needs while staying focused and productive. 5. It reduces the need for frequent audits. Organizations usually spend heavily performing frequent internal and external audits to generate valuable data about the state of their security. The data is deployed to improve cybersecurity so that threat intelligence and other security aspects are optimized. And even though it costs more and wastes more time, it doesn’t guarantee as much protection as implementing ISO 27001 standard. By becoming a certified name, companies can rest assured that the best cybersecurity practices protect them against attacks. Plus, frequent audits won’t be needed, thus saving cost and time. Schedule a Demo ISO/IEC 27001 Compliance Organizations looking to achieve ISO/IEC 27001 compliance must ensure the following: 1. Clearly Outline the Risk Assessment Process Develop your risk assessment process to detect vulnerabilities. State the categories of risks your organization is facing Outline your approach to tackle vulnerabilities. 2. Make Sure Executives Set the Tone Top management must be involved in the information security program. They should show financial support and be available to make strategic decisions that will help build robust security. Senior management should also conduct frequent assessments of the company’s ISMS to ensure it’s in sync with the globally agreed security standard. 3. Design an Information Security Policy (ISP) An ISP essentially functions to ensure that all the users and networks of your organization’s IT structure stick with the standard practices of digital data storage. You must design an effective ISP to achieve compliance as it governs information protection. Your ISP should encompass the A to Z of your organization’s IT security, including cloud security. You need to state who will be responsible for implementing the designed policy. 4. Write Out Your Statement of Applicability (SoA) Your SoA should carry core information about your ISMS. It should state the controls that your organization regards necessary to combat information security risks. It should document the controls that were not applied The SoA should only be shared with the certification body. 5. Create Your Risk Management Strategy Develop an effective risk management plan to address the possible risks of your chosen security controls. Ensure there’s an efficient security operations center (soc) to help detect cyber threats and forward notifications to the right systems. Design an information security incident management strategy to respond during threat detection. State who will implement specific security controls, how, and when they will deploy them. Schedule a Demo FAQs What does ISO/IEC 27001 stand for? ISO stands for International Standardization Organization, while IEC represents International Electrotechnical Commission. ISO/IEC 27001 is an internationally accepted standard for information security management, which ISO and IEC first created. What are the ISO 27001 Requirements? Every organization looking to apply for certification must prepare themselves and ensure to meet the requirements. These requirements are summarized in Clauses 4.1 to 10.2 below: 4.1 Understanding the organization and its context 4.2 Understanding the needs and expectations of interested parties 4.3 Determining the scope of the ISMS 4.4 Information security management system (ISMS) 5.1 Leadership and commitment 5.2 Information Security Policy 5.3 Organisational roles, responsibilities, and authorities 6.1 Actions to address risks and opportunities 6.2 Information security objectives and planning to achieve them 7.1 Resources 7.2 Competence 7.3 Awareness 7.4 Communication 7.5 Documented information 8.1 Operational planning and control 8.2 Information security risk assessment 8.3 Information security risk treatment 9.1 Monitoring, measurement, analysis, and evaluation 9.2 Internal audit 9.3 Management review 10.1 Nonconformity and corrective action 10.2 Continual improvement What are the ISO/IEC 27001 controls? The latest version of ISO 27001 Annex A enumerates 93 security controls divided into four sections or themes. The ISO 27001 controls are designed to simplify information security management such that digital assets get the best protection against security threats. These 4 sections are labelled A5 to A8 and are as follows: A.5 Organizational controls – containing 37 controls A.6 People controls – containing 8 controls A.7 Physical controls – containing 14 controls A.8 Technological controls – containing 34 controls How Does ISO/IEC 27001 ensure data protection? ISO/IEC 27001 ensures data protection by providing a framework through which companies can store sensitive data and have full access control. This standard can be adapted to suit each organization’s specific needs and structure, thereby offering optimized protection. ISO/IEC 27001 aims to ascertain that three core information security aspects are taken care of, which are: Confidentiality: this guarantees that only authorized individuals can access information. Also, because organizations deal with different categories of data, each employee must only be given the degree of access required to execute their tasks efficiently. Integrity: this ensures that only authorized individuals can change information on the system. So even in the event of a security breach, the risks are minimal. This is due to the change management plan that ensures unauthorized persons can not alter information. Availability: information security becomes a problem if the secured information isn’t accessible when needed. ISO 27001 enables authorized persons to have access to information whenever required to ensure that business operations are uninterrupted. By maintaining these guidelines, companies can put in place an effective information security system and risk management plan to prevent data leaks, theft, or hacks. How does my firewall management help with ISO 27001? Firewalls are the software in your organization’s IT structure managing the connection between different networks. Effective firewall management can help in designing the right Information Security Policy (ISP). In turn, your organization will be able to achieve ISO 27001 compliance. Thus, your firewall policies can help with ISO 27001 by enabling organizations to design an Information Security Policy that agrees with the standard required for compliance. What is the Importance of ISO 27001 Certification, and how can I gain it? ISO 27001 certification offers several advantages to businesses and organizations. It demonstrates to partners, investors, and customers that the certified business has a reliable information security management system, thus winning their trust. Also, it enhances communications security so that third parties do not interfere with your company’s operating system. You also get to reduce the risk of security failure, saving you from financial losses and penalties. Once you’ve met the compliance requirements, you may gain an ISO 27001 certification by registering with an accredited certification body Schedule a Demo How can AlgoSec Help with ISO 27001 Compliance? Organizations must regularly conduct audits and prepare compliance reports to attain and maintain ISO 27001 certification. The data generated from event logs are equally helpful in enhancing threat intelligence and overall operations security. This process is often time-consuming and cost-demanding, and that’s where AlgoSec comes in. Being an ISO 27001-certified vendor, AlgoSec understands the challenges of ISO 27001 compliance and is dedicated to providing affordable and effective solutions. AlgoSec automatically generates pre-populated, audit-ready compliance reports for ISO 27001 and other leading industry regulations like SOX, BASEL II, GLBA, PCI DSS, and FISMA. This technique helps companies reduce audit preparation efforts and costs and uncovers loopholes in their ISMS. As a result, businesses can take proper measures to ensure full ISO 27001 compliance, thus becoming worthy of the certification. Schedule a Demo Select a size Introductory prologue What Is ISO/IEC 27001? Evolution of ISO/IEC 27001 Business Benefits of ISO/IEC 27001 ISO/IEC 27001 Compliance FAQs How can AlgoSec Help with ISO 27001 Compliance? 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

Compliance made easy Pass your audits stress free AlgoSec Webinar Webinars Compliance made easy. Pass your audits stress-free. Don’t fail an audit ever again. Yes, it’s possible. It doesn’t matter what regulation you are talking about, whether your own internal compliance standard or a common global framework such as PCI DSS, SOX, HIPPA, SWIFT, or even HKMA. We’ll show you how. In this webinar, AlgoSec security expert Tal Dayan will reveal: The secrets to passing audits How to improve your compliance score How to always remain compliant January 27, 2021 Tal Dayan AlgoSec security expert Relevant resources Network Security Audit? Passing Your Next One with Flying Colors Keep Reading Network Security Audit? Passing Your Next One with Flying Colors Keep Reading Regulations and compliance for the data center - A Day in the Life Read Document 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

Get your network security questions answered by AlgoSec experts. Find clear, concise answers to common challenges and best practices for optimal security. Network Security FAQs: Answered by AlgoSec Experts What is AlgoSec? AlgoSec is a network security management solution that provides organizations with a comprehensive and centralized platform to manage their network security policies, optimize firewall rules, and automate security workflows. It helps businesses gain visibility and control over their network infrastructure, ensuring security and compliance. Schedule a Demo What are AlgoSec’s key features? AlgoSec offers several key features to enhance network security management. These include: Firewall Policy Management: AlgoSec allows organizations to efficiently manage firewall policies across heterogeneous networks, simplifying rule management, optimizing configurations, and ensuring policy compliance. Application Connectivity Management: AlgoSec provides visibility into application connectivity requirements and automates the process of configuring and deploying necessary network security changes, ensuring uninterrupted application availability. Risk and Compliance Management: AlgoSec helps businesses identify and mitigate risks by continuously monitoring network security policies, providing compliance reports, and automating compliance workflows. Change Automation and Orchestration: AlgoSec automates security change management processes, enabling organizations to implement changes quickly and accurately while reducing the risk of misconfigurations. Security Policy Optimization: AlgoSec analyzes firewall policies to identify redundant, unused, or risky rules, allowing organizations to optimize their security policies for better performance and reduced attack surface. Schedule a Demo Which network infrastructure vendors does AlgoSec support? AlgoSec supports a wide range of network infrastructure vendors, including but not limited to: Firewall and Security Devices: AlgoSec integrates with leading firewall vendors such as Cisco, Check Point , Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, and many others, providing centralized management capabilities. Cloud Platforms: AlgoSec supports cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), enabling organizations to manage their network security policies in both on-premises and cloud environments. Network Devices: AlgoSec integrates with various network devices, switches, routers, and load balancers from vendors like Cisco, Juniper Networks, F5 Networks, and others, facilitating comprehensive network security management . Schedule a Demo How does AlgoSec help with compliance management? AlgoSec assists organizations in compliance management by automating the auditing and reporting processes, ensuring network security policies align with regulatory and industry standards. It provides predefined compliance frameworks such as PCI DSS, HIPAA , NIST, and GDPR, along with continuous monitoring and reporting capabilities. AlgoSec’s Compliance and Risk Analyzer helps identify compliance gaps and recommends necessary actions to maintain a compliant security posture. Schedule a Demo Can AlgoSec automate security policy workflows? Yes, AlgoSec offers robust automation capabilities for security policy changes. It enables organizations to define predefined workflows and approval processes for security policy modifications. AlgoSec’s automated security policy change workflows help organizations respond to emerging threats and vulnerabilities, improving their cybersecurity posture against hackers leveraging the latest malware. Our Change Manager application automates the change implementation process, ensuring that security policy changes are accurate, auditable, and compliant. This helps reduce the manual effort involved in change management, accelerates the change implementation time, and minimizes the risk of misconfigurations. Schedule a Demo What are the requirements for using AlgoSec? The AlgoSec Security Management Suite (ASMS) requires the following hardware and software configurations to run properly: 1: Hardware deployment devices must meet or exceed the following: 4-core CPU 16 GB of memory 300 GB of storage 2: Additional hardware requirements depend on the environment configuration and type. Here are some of the requirements associated with popular environments: NAS Storage. If you store reports on a remote NAS server, you will need to configure your ASMS deployment to use the appropriate protocol for NAS connections . HA/DR Clusters. Every node in a HA/DR cluster should be identical. That means every AlgoSec deployment instance should either be through hardware or through a VM appliance, with the same amount of disk space on every node. Distributed Architecture. Distributed architecture environments may include additional requirements from the central manager, geographically distributed remote agents, and load-distributing slave assets. Remote agents and slave assets do not store reports. AWS Deployments. Ensure your AWS environment is compatible with CentOS6. Machines from the Amazon EC2 General Purpose M4 family are recommended. Make sure your AWS instance uses high performance storage – solid-state drive disks are recommended. 3: Software requirements are only necessary on virtual appliances. AlgoSec hardware appliances come pre-installed with all necessary software. Virtual machines must use VMWare ESC Version 5.5 or higher. Schedule a Demo What is the deployment process for AlgoSec? A typical full ASMS deployment with out-of-the-box functionality involves the following steps: Getting ready . Work with AlgoSec to identify your environment’s needs and provision the appropriate components. Deploy infrastructure. Deploy standalone or cloud-based appliances, set up your environment with high-availability and disaster recovery clusters. Configure and manage clusters for secure operation. Deploy AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer. License, authenticate, and configure the application. Define user roles and integrate mail, storage, and infrastructure components. Deploy AlgoSecFlow. Complete initial setup using fully configurable FireFlow templates and workflows. Create a sample change request and push it through the workflow to test each step. Build ASMS Network Topology. Verify network maps, run end-to-end traffic simulation queries, and adjust data visualization templates. Deploy AlgoSecAppViz. Complete initial setup. Define users, permissions, and roles. Identify security zones and manage vulnerability assessment scanners. Install AutoDiscovery so AppViz can automatically detect flows and applications. Schedule a Demo What is the pricing model for AlgoSec? Every organization is unique. We can’t provide a one-size-fits-all pricing model for simplifying complex policy changes across such a varied landscape of information security policies and requirements. AlgoSec’s extensive and highly customizable information security policy management solutions are priced according to multiple factors. We take the organization’s network environment into consideration, as well as the volume of confidential information protected by its security policies. Although we can’t offer complete pricing information on our Frequently Asked Questions page, we are happy to help your organization calculate the ROI it stands to gain from leveraging our IT security platform. Please refer to our ROI calculator to find out how much you can save with AlgoSec. Schedule a Demo How is AlgoSec different from Tufin and FireMon? AlgoSec is a comprehensive security policy management platform with capabilities that Tufin and FireMon do not have (or only partially implement). This makes it better-suited to meeting strict security compliance needs and reliably protecting organizations against cyber attacks, malicious software, and ransomware. AlgoSec integrates fully with SIEM systems and allows for unified, consolidated management of different cloud security groups. It supports risk analysis for Infrastructure-as-Code deployments for DevSecOps as well. Compared to Tufin , AlgoSec: Comprehensively discovers applications and services automatically. Connects applications to security policy rules. Automates policy change management workflows without additional add-ons. Compared to FireMon , AlgoSec: Fully supports vulnerability management on the business application level Automatically associates firewall rules to relevant business applications Supports custom policy rule documentation Schedule a Demo What is a firewall analyzer? AlgoSec’s Firewall Analyzer enables you to visualize your entire computer network and its topology from a single point of view. This lets you see where security threats may come from, and gives the opportunity to distribute resources more efficiently between firewall assets. Firewall Analyzer users can run simulated “what-if” queries to find out how cybercriminals may interact with anti-virus solutions on endpoint mobile devices or known vulnerabilities in operating systems. You can use it to see how data breaches and denial of service attacks may impact your organization. This gives you the opportunity to run highly targeted penetration testing initiatives. You can then update your data security policies in response to the insights you gain. Schedule a Demo How does AlgoSec help with firewall management? AlgoSec automates the process of managing firewall policies and rules in response to emerging cyber threats. This allows organizations to protect sensitive data and block unauthorized access without relying on painstaking manual processes. Firewall management is a vital part of every organization’s security posture. AlgoSec helps organizations develop and maintain valuable policies from a single dashboard. It generates notifications when firewall policies need updating to include new threat signatures, and automates the process of introducing those new signatures into the organization’s firewall policies. This allows organizations to respond to rapidly-developing threats quickly. Organizations can protect themselves against phishing attacks, spyware, trojans, and computer viruses more effectively when their firewalls are consistently configured. Schedule a Demo What is network security policy management? Network security policy management is the process of optimizing the security rules information systems follow when handling network traffic. This may include protections against using company devices for unauthorized purposes – like accessing social media – as well as strict rules for protecting personal data and fighting cybercrime. Network security policies are highly dependent on the solutions and technologies that make up the organization’s tech stack. Strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, and SSL certification are examples of elements common to many policies. However, these policies must also include specific rules for handling complex technologies like firewalls, intrusion detection solutions, and intrusion prevention systems. Manually managing network security policies is a time-consuming, error-prone process . Many organizations deploy automated platforms to address these problems and provide better outcomes to security event mitigation processes. Schedule a Demo How does AlgoSec help with network security management? AlgoSec automates many of the processes that go into network security management. This allows security teams to address emerging threats more effectively while reducing the overall cost of managing complex network security deployments. AlgoSec’s automated network security management platform updates many different aspects of your organization’s security policy framework. This ensures your organization’s anti-virus software knows what to look for, while giving security personnel the ability to establish robust firewall rules, VPN policies, and endpoint security rules for employee smartphones. Automated network security management helps trigger alerts when IP addresses associated with malicious servers attempt to connect with your assets, or when cybercriminals send malicious HTML links to your employees. Schedule a Demo How does Algosec help with network segmentation? Proper network segmentation helps protect organizations from costly cyberattacks. AlgoSec enables security teams to proactively identify segmentation opportunities that can improve the organization’s overall security posture. This may include suggestions to group certain types of devices together based on the security policies and rules they follow. It may also include heightened protections for network segments that deal with sensitive personal data or credit card information. AlgoSec automates the process of identifying these opportunities and putting them into practice. Schedule a Demo Can AlgoSec help with compliance management? AlgoSec automatically identifies compliance gaps so that security teams can remediate them proactively instead of waiting for the next audit. Preparing firewalls for audits is difficult and time-consuming. Most regulations require organizations to demonstrate continuous compliance by undertaking audits regularly. This puts a great deal of strain on organizations with thousands of rules and access control lists that must be updated with the latest changes before the next audit. With AlgoSec, you can generate audit-ready reports for all major regulations, including SOX, HIPAA, NERC, and PCI. You can generate custom reports for internal compliance initiatives and create a comprehensive audit trail of firewall changes as well. Schedule a Demo How does AlgoSec automate security policy management? AlgoSec provides an end-to-end security policy management framework that integrates with multiple solutions throughout the network. It grants visibility into business applications and security policies, proactively identifies application dependencies, and accelerates policy changes with a zero-touch interface. Organizations rely on AlgoSec to avoid costly misconfigurations and gain deep visibility into connectivity and security policy changes. AlgoSec’s automated security policy management platform allows security teams to manage technical debt and address shadow IT risks more effectively than with manual, error-prone processes. Schedule a Demo How does AlgoSec integrate with other security tools? AlgoSec integrates with a broad variety of external security tools. It fully supports SIEM integration, allowing analysts to include extensive log data on firewall policies and configurations into their investigations. AlgoSec allows SIEM users to manage security policies and augment them with business context directly through the SIEM interface. Some examples of external security tools that AlgoSec integrates with include Splunk and IBM QRadar . You can also integrate AlgoSec FireFlow directly into third-party security tools using a CMS web service . Schedule a Demo How does AlgoSec help with risk assessment and analysis? AlgoSec allows security professionals to preview the effects of security policy changes before enacting them. This allows organizations to carefully assess the risks associated with new policy changes and identify rules that require remediation. AlgoSec can also generate audit-ready reports designed to meet the requirements of major compliance regulations . This allows organizations to quickly assess policy changes for compliance violations before implementing new policies. Security professionals can also use AlgoSec to discover risky traffic flows, providing early warning of potential risks. The platform can then update the appropriate firewall rules and security policies to address and remediate the risk associated with those flows. Schedule a Demo Can AlgoSec be used to manage cloud security policies? AlgoSec provides organizations with an industry-leading platform for managing cloud security policies effectively. Security teams can gain in-depth visibility into their cloud security posture and automatically manage connectivity between cloud-hosted infrastructure, virtual and hardware firewalls, and software-defined network assets. With centralized management and comprehensive solutions for detecting and mitigating risk, AlgoSec enables automated cloud security policy management for organizations of all sizes. Schedule a Demo How does AlgoSec ensure the security of its own platform? All customer data stored or processed by AlgoSec enjoys state-of-the-art security in compliance with multiple regulatory frameworks. AlgoSec is ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO/IEC 27017:2015 certified, and operates rigorous ongoing technical security controls to maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of customer data. AlgoSec uses stateless services to isolate its software-as-a-service (SaaS) products. This protects against data leaks and ensures data remains isolated between tenants. When at rest, data is isolated in separate databases for each customer, secured with unique access credentials that are not directly available to users. Schedule a Demo Does AlgoSec support multi-vendor environments? Yes, AlgoSec supports multi-vendor environments, allowing organizations with complex infrastructure to manage security policies without trapping individual components in their own silos. AlgoSec unifies and consolidates multi-vendor environments so that security teams have a single point of reference for addressing security policy changes. This allows organizations with multi-vendor environments to get a full and comprehensive picture of their network applications and traffic flows. It grants security teams full visibility into the hybrid network estate , allowing for better, more accurate risk assessment and policy management. Schedule a Demo How does AlgoSec help with change management? AlgoSec improves the accuracy of policy changes while reducing the amount of time and effort that goes into network policy change management . This helps organizations maintain regulatory compliance while proactively addressing vulnerabilities and blind spots in their overall security posture. By automating the most time-consuming and error-prone parts of the change management process, AlgoSec enables organizations to reduce the risk associated with complex policy changes while automating the most complicated steps in that process. Schedule a Demo What are the reporting and analytics capabilities of AlgoSec? The AlgoSec Reporting Tool (ART) includes multiple templates and data visualization capabilities designed to help decision-makers understand their security posture. It includes a variety of ready-made compliance templates designed to address the needs of common regulatory frameworks, like HIPAA, SOX, and more. AlgoSec also supports custom dashboards and data visualization tools so that security leaders can communicate their findings more fluently with non-technical executives and leaders. Users can explore data visualizations and create brand-new analytics queries directly through the ART interface. Schedule a Demo Can AlgoSec be used for continuous compliance monitoring? Yes, AlgoSec supports continuous compliance monitoring. As organizations adapt their security policies to meet emerging threats and address new vulnerabilities, they must constantly verify these changes against the compliance frameworks they subscribe to. AlgoSec can generate risk assessment reports and conduct internal audits on-demand, allowing compliance officers to monitor compliance performance in real-time. Security professionals can also use AlgoSec to preview and simulate proposed changes to the organization’s security policies. This gives compliance officers a valuable degree of lead-time before planned changes impact regulatory guidelines and allows for continuous real-time monitoring. Schedule a Demo Select a size What is AlgoSec? What are AlgoSec’s key features? Which network infrastructure vendors does AlgoSec support? How does AlgoSec help with compliance management? Can AlgoSec automate security policy workflows? What are the requirements for using AlgoSec? What is the deployment process for AlgoSec? What is the pricing model for AlgoSec? How is AlgoSec different from Tufin and FireMon? What is a firewall analyzer? How does AlgoSec help with firewall management? What is network security policy management? How does AlgoSec help with network security management? How does Algosec help with network segmentation? Can AlgoSec help with compliance management? How does AlgoSec automate security policy management? How does AlgoSec integrate with other security tools? How does AlgoSec help with risk assessment and analysis? Can AlgoSec be used to manage cloud security policies? How does AlgoSec ensure the security of its own platform? Does AlgoSec support multi-vendor environments? How does AlgoSec help with change management? What are the reporting and analytics capabilities of AlgoSec? Can AlgoSec be used for continuous compliance monitoring? 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

Over nearly two decades, AlgoSec has undergone a remarkable evolution in both technology and offerings. Initially founded with the... Application Connectivity Management Evolving network security: AlgoSec’s technological journey and its critical role in application connectivity Nitin Rajput 2 min read Nitin Rajput Short bio about author here Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Vitae donec tincidunt elementum quam laoreet duis sit enim. Duis mattis velit sit leo diam. Tags Share this article 12/13/23 Published Over nearly two decades, AlgoSec has undergone a remarkable evolution in both technology and offerings. Initially founded with the mission of simplifying network security device management, the company has consistently adapted to the changing landscape of cybersecurity. Proactive Network Security In its early years, AlgoSec focused on providing a comprehensive view of network security configurations, emphasizing compliance, risk assessment, and optimization. Recognizing the limitations of a reactive approach, AlgoSec pivoted to develop a workflow-based ticketing system, enabling proactive assessment of traffic changes against risk and compliance. Cloud-Native Security As organizations transitioned to hybrid and cloud environments, AlgoSec expanded its capabilities to include cloud-native security controls. Today, AlgoSec seamlessly manages public cloud platforms such as Cisco ACI, NSX, AWS, GCP, and Azure, ensuring a unified security posture across diverse infrastructures. Application Connectivity Discovery A recent breakthrough for AlgoSec is its focus on helping customers navigate the challenges of migrating applications to public or private clouds. The emphasis lies in discovering and mapping application flows within the network infrastructure, addressing the crucial need for maintaining control and communication channels. This discovery process is facilitated by AlgoSec’s built-in solution or by importing data from third-party micro-segmentation solutions like Cisco Secure Workloads, Guardicore, or Illumio. Importance of Application Connectivity Why is discovering and mapping application connectivity crucial? Applications are the lifeblood of organizations, driving business functions and, from a technical standpoint, influencing decisions related to firewall rule decommissioning, cloud migration, micro-segmentation, and zero-trust frameworks. Compliance requirements further emphasize the necessity of maintaining a clear understanding of application connectivity flows. Enforcing Micro-Segmentation with AlgoSec Micro-segmentation, a vital network security approach, aims to secure workloads independently by creating security zones per machine. AlgoSec plays a pivotal role in enforcing micro-segmentation by providing a detailed understanding of application connectivity flows. Through its discovery modules, AlgoSec ingests data and translates it into access controls, simplifying the management of north-south and east-west traffic within SDN-based micro-segmentation solutions. Secure Application Connectivity Migration In the complex landscape of public cloud and application migration, AlgoSec emerges as a solution to ensure success. Recognizing the challenges organizations face, AlgoSec’s AutoDiscovery capabilities enable a smooth migration process. By automatically generating security policy change requests, AlgoSec simplifies a traditionally complex and risky process, ensuring business services remain uninterrupted while meeting compliance requirements. In conclusion, AlgoSec’s technological journey reflects a commitment to adaptability and innovation, addressing the ever-changing demands of network security. From its origins in network device management to its pivotal role in cloud security and application connectivity, AlgoSec continues to be a key player in shaping the future of cybersecurity. Schedule a demo Related Articles 2025 in review: What innovations and milestones defined AlgoSec’s transformative year in 2025? AlgoSec Reviews Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Navigating Compliance in the Cloud AlgoSec Cloud Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read 5 Multi-Cloud Environments Cloud Security Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Speak to one of our experts Speak to one of our experts Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Schedule a call

Hybrid cloud security uses a combination of on-premises equipment, private cloud deployments, and public cloud platforms to secure an... Uncategorized Top 6 Hybrid Cloud Security Solutions: Key Features for 2024 Tsippi Dach 2 min read Tsippi Dach Short bio about author here Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Vitae donec tincidunt elementum quam laoreet duis sit enim. Duis mattis velit sit leo diam. Tags Share this article 1/15/24 Published Hybrid cloud security uses a combination of on-premises equipment, private cloud deployments, and public cloud platforms to secure an organization’s data, apps, and assets. It’s vital to the success of any organization that uses hybrid cloud network infrastructure. The key factors that make hybrid cloud security different from other types of security solutions are flexibility and agility. Your hybrid cloud security solution must be able to prevent, detect, and respond to threats regardless of the assets they compromise. That means being able to detect anomalous behaviors and enforce policies across physical endpoints, cloud-hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployments, and in public cloud data centers. You need visibility and control wherever your organization stores or processes sensitive data. What is Hybrid Cloud Security? To understand hybrid cloud security, we must first cover exactly what the hybrid cloud is and how it works. Hybrid cloud infrastructure generally refers to any combination of public cloud providers (like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and private cloud environments. It’s easy to predict the security challenges hosting some of your organization’s apps on public cloud infrastructure and other apps on its own private cloud. How do you gain visibility across these different environments? How do you address vulnerabilities and misconfiguration risks? Hybrid cloud architecture can create complex problems for security leaders. However, it provides organizations with much-needed flexibility and offers a wide range of data deployment options. Most enterprises use a hybrid cloud strategy because it’s very rare for a large organization to entrust its entire IT infrastructure to a single vendor. As a result, security leaders need to come up with solutions that address the risks unique to hybrid cloud environments. Key Features of Hybrid Cloud Security An optimized hybrid cloud security solution gives the organization a centralized point of reference for managing security policies and toolsets across the entire environment. This makes it easier for security leaders to solve complex problems and detect advanced threats before they evolve into business disruptions. Hybrid cloud infrastructure can actually improve your security posture if managed appropriately. Some of the things you can do in this kind of environment include: Manage security risk more effectively. Lock down your most sensitive and highly regulated data in infrastructure under your direct control, while saving on cloud computing costs by entrusting less sensitive data to a third party. Distribute points of failure. Diversifying your organization’s cloud infrastructure reduces your dependence on any single cloud platform. This amplifies many of the practical benefits of network segmentation. Implement Zero Trust. Hybrid cloud networks can be configured with strict access control and authentication policies. These policies should work without regard to the network’s location, providing a strong foundation for demonstrating Zero Trust . Navigate complex compliance requirements. Organizations with hybrid cloud infrastructure are well-prepared to meet strict compliance requirements that apply to certain regions, like CCPA or GDPR data classification . With the right tools, demonstrating compliance through custom reports is easy. Real-time monitoring and remediation . With the right hybrid cloud security solutions in place, you can gain in-depth oversight into cloud workloads and respond immediately to security incidents when they occur. How Do Hybrid Cloud Security Solutions Work? Integration with Cloud Platforms The first step towards building a hybrid cloud strategy is determining how your cloud infrastructure deployments will interact with one another. This requires carefully reviewing the capabilities of the major public cloud platforms you use and determining your own private cloud integration capabilities. You will need to ensure seamless operation between these platforms while retaining visibility over your entire network. using APIs to programmatically connect different aspects of your cloud environment can help automate some of the most time-intensive manual tasks. For example, you may need to manage security configurations and patch updates across many different cloud resources. This will be very difficult and time-consuming if done manually, but a well-integrated automation-ready policy management solution can make it easy. Security Controls and Measures Your hybrid cloud solution will also need to provide comprehensive tools for managing firewalls and endpoints throughout your environment. These security tools can’t work in isolation — they need consistent policies informed by observation of your organization’s real-world risk profile. That means you’ll need to deploy a centralized solution for managing the policies and rulesets these devices use, and continuously configure them to address the latest threats. You will also need to configure your hybrid cloud network to prevent lateral movement and make it harder for internal threat actors to execute attacks. This is achieved with network segmentation, which partitions different parts of your network into segments that do not automatically accept traffic from one another. Microsegmentation further isolates different assets in your network according to their unique security needs, allowing access only to an exclusive set of users and assets. Dividing cloud workloads and resources into micro-segmented network zones improves network security and makes it harder for threat actors to successfully launch malware and ransomware attacks. It reduces the attack surface and enhances your endpoint security capabilities by enabling you to quarantine compromised endpoints the moment you detect unauthorized activity. How to Choose a Hybrid Cloud Security Provider Your hybrid cloud security provider should offer an extensive range of features that help you optimize your cloud service provider’s security capabilities. It should seamlessly connect your security team to the cloud platforms it’s responsible for protecting, while providing relevant context and visibility into cloud security threats. Here are some of the key features to look out for when choosing a hybrid cloud security provider: Scalability and Flexibility. The solution must scale according to your hybrid environment’s needs. Changing security providers is never easy, and you should project its capabilities well into the future before deciding to go through with the implementation. Pay close attention to usage and pricing models that may not be economically feasible as your organization grows. SLAs and Compliance. Your provider must offer service-level agreements that guarantee a certain level of performance. These SLAs will also play an important role ensuring compliance requirements are always observed, especially in highly regulated sectors like healthcare. Security Posture Assessment. You must be able to easily leverage the platform to assess and improve your overall security posture in a hybrid cloud model. This requires visibility and control over your data, regardless of where it is stored or processed. Not all hybrid cloud security solutions have the integrations necessary to make this feasible. DevSecOps Integration. Prioritize cloud security providers that offer support for integrating security best practices into DevOps, and providing security support early in the software development lifecycle. If your organization plans on building continuous deployment capabilities now or in the future, you will need to ensure your cloud security platform is capable of supporting those workflows. Top 6 Hybrid Cloud Security Solutions 1. AlgoSec AlgoSec is an application connectivity platform that manages security policies across hybrid and multi-cloud environments . It allows security leaders to take control of their apps and security tools, managing and enforcing policies that safeguard cloud services from threats. AlgoSec supports the automation of data security policy changes and allows users to simulate configuration changes across their tech stack. This makes it a powerful tool for in-depth risk analysis and compliance reporting, while giving security leaders the features they need to address complex hybrid cloud security challenges . Key Features: Complete network visualization. AlgoSec intelligently analyzes application dependencies across the network, giving security teams clear visibility into their network topology. Zero-touch change management. Customers can automate application and policy connectivity changes without requiring manual interaction between administrators and security tools. Comprehensive security policy management. AlgoSec lets administrators manage security policies across cloud and on-premises infrastructure, ensuring consistent security throughout the organization. What Do People Say About AlgoSec? AlgoSec is highly rated for its in-depth policy management capabilities and its intuitive, user-friendly interface. Customers praise its enhanced visibility, intelligent automation, and valuable configuration simulation tools. AlgoSec provides security professionals with an easy way to discover and map their network, and scale policy management even as IT infrastructure grows. 2. Microsoft Azure Security Center Microsoft Azure Security Center provides threat protection and unified security management across hybrid cloud workloads. As a leader in cloud computing, Microsoft has equipped Azure Security Center with a wide range of cloud-specific capabilities like advanced analytics, DevOps integrations, and comprehensive access management features into a single cloud-native solution. Adaptive Application Controls leverages machine learning to give users personalized recommendations for whitelisting applications. Just-in-Time VM Access protects cloud infrastructure from brute force attacks by reducing access when virtual machines are not needed. Key Features: Unified security management. Microsoft’s security platform offers visibility both into cloud workflows and non-cloud assets. It can map your hybrid network and enable proactive threat detection across the enterprise tech stack. Continuous security assessments. The platform supports automated security assessments for network assets, services, and applications. It triggers alerts notifying administrators when vulnerabilities are detected. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) compatibility. Microsoft enables customers to extend visibility and protection to the IaaS layer, providing uniform security and control across hybrid networks. What Do People Say About Microsoft Azure Security Center? Customers praise Microsoft’s hybrid cloud security solution for its user-friendly interface and integration capabilities. However, many users complain about false positives. These may be the result of security tool misconfigurations that lead to unnecessary disruptions and expensive investigations. 3. Amazon AWS Security Hub Amazon AWS Security Hub is a full-featured cloud security posture management solution that centralized security alerts and enables continuous monitoring of cloud infrastructure. It provides a detailed view of security alerts and compliance status across the hybrid environment. Security leaders can use Amazon AWS Security Hub to automate compliance checks, and manage their security posture through a centralized solution. It provides extensive API support and can integrate with a wide variety of additional tools. Key Features: Automated best practice security checks. AWS can continuously check your security practices against a well-maintained set of standards developed by Amazon security experts. Excellent data visualization capabilities. Administrators can customize the Security Hub dashboard according to specific compliance requirements and generate custom reports to demonstrate security performance. Uniform formatting for security findings. AWS uses its own format — the AWS Security Findings Format (ASFF) — to eliminate the need to normalize data across multiple tools and platforms. What Do People Say About Amazon AWS Security Hub? Amazon’s Security Hub is an excellent choice for native cloud security posture management, providing granular control and easy compliance. However, the platform’s complexity and lack of visibility does not resonate well with all customers. Some organizations will need to spend considerable time and effort building comprehensive security reports. 4. Google Cloud Security Command Center Google’s centralized platform helps administrators identify and remediate security risks in Google Cloud and hybrid environments. It is designed to identify misconfigurations and vulnerabilities while making it easier for security leaders to manage regulatory compliance. Some of the key features it offers include real-time threat detection, security health analytics, and risk assessment tools. Google can also simulate the attack path that threat actors might use to compromise cloud networks. Key Features: Multiple service tiers. The standard service tier provides security health analytics and alerts, while the premium tier offers attack path simulations and event threat detection capabilities. AI-generated summaries. Premium subscribers can read dynamically generated summaries of security findings and attack paths in natural language, reducing this technology’s barrier to entry. Cloud infrastructure entitlement management. Google’s platform supports cloud infrastructure entitlement management, which exposes misconfigurations at the principal account level from an identity-based framework What Do People Say About Google Cloud Security Command Center? Customers applaud the feature included in Google’s premium tier for this service, but complain that it can be hard to get. Not all organizations meet the requirements necessary to use this platform’s most advanced features. Once properly implemented and configured, however, it provides state-of-the-art cloud security that integrates well with Google-centric workflows. 5. IBM Cloud Pak for Security IBM’s cloud security service connects disparate data sources across hybrid and multi-cloud environments to uncover hidden threats. It allows hybrid organizations to advance Zero Trust strategies without compromising on operational security. IBM provides its customers with AI-driven insights, seamless integrations with existing IT environments, and data protection capabilities. It’s especially well-suited for enterprise organizations that want to connect public cloud services with legacy technology deployments that are difficult or expensive to modify. Key Features : Open security. This platform is designed to integrate easily with existing security applications, making it easy for customers to scale their security tech stack and improve policy standards across the enterprise. Improved data stewardship. IBM doesn’t require customers to move their data from one place to another. This makes compliance much easier to manage, especially in complex enterprise environments. Threat intelligence integrations. Customers can integrate IBM Cloud Pak with IBM Threat Intelligence Insights to get detailed and actionable insights delivered to cloud security teams. What Do People Say About IBM Cloud Pak? IBM Cloud Pak helps connect security teams and administrators to the content they need in real time. However, it’s a complicated environment with a significant amount of legacy code, well-established workarounds, and secondary components. This impacts usability and makes it less accessible than other entries on this list. 6. Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud Palo Alto Networks offers comprehensive cloud-native security across multi-cloud and hybrid environments to customers. Prisma Cloud reduces risk and prevents security breaches at multiple points in the application lifecycle. Some of the key features this solution includes are continuous monitoring, API security, and vulnerability management. It provides comprehensive visibility and control to security leaders managing extensive hybrid cloud deployments. Key Features: Hardens CI/CD pipelines. This solution includes robust features for reducing the attack surface of application development environments and protecting CI/CD pipelines. Secures infrastructure-as-code (IaC) deployments. Extensive coverage for detecting and resolving misconfigurations in IaC templates like Terraform, Kubernetes, ARM, and CloudFormation. Provides context-aware prioritization. Palo Alto Networks addresses open source vulnerabilities and license compliance problems contextually, bringing attention to the most important issues first. What Do People Say About Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud? Palo Alto Networks is highly regarded as an enterprise security leader. Many customers praise its products, and Prisma Cloud is no different. However, it comes with a very high price tag that many organizations simply can’t afford. This is especially true when additional integration and implementation costs are factored in. Additionally, some customers have complained about the lack of embedded Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls in the solution. Optimize Hybrid Cloud Security with AlgoSec Security leaders must continually adapt their security deployments to meet evolving cybersecurity threats in hybrid cloud environments. As the threat landscape changes, the organization’s policies and capabilities must adjust to meet new demands. Achieving this level of flexibility is not easy with purely manual configuration and policy workflows. Human error is a major element in many data breaches, and organizations must develop security best practices that address that risk. Implementing the right cloud security platform can make a significant difference when it comes to securing complex hybrid cloud deployments. The ability to simulate in-depth configuration changes and automate the deployment of those changes across the entire environment offers significant advantages to operational security. Consider making AlgoSec your cybersecurity co-pilot for identifying vulnerabilities and addressing security gaps. Avoid costly misconfigurations and leverage intelligent automation to make your hybrid cloud environment more secure than ever before. Schedule a demo Related Articles 2025 in review: What innovations and milestones defined AlgoSec’s transformative year in 2025? AlgoSec Reviews Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Navigating Compliance in the Cloud AlgoSec Cloud Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read 5 Multi-Cloud Environments Cloud Security Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Speak to one of our experts Speak to one of our experts Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Schedule a call

Anat Kleinmann, AlgoSec Sr. Product Manager and IaC expert, discusses how incorporating Infrastructure-as-Code into DevSecOps can allow... Risk Management and Vulnerabilities Bridging the DevSecOps Application Connectivity Disconnect via IaC Anat Kleinmann 2 min read Anat Kleinmann Short bio about author here Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Vitae donec tincidunt elementum quam laoreet duis sit enim. Duis mattis velit sit leo diam. Tags Share this article 11/7/22 Published Anat Kleinmann, AlgoSec Sr. Product Manager and IaC expert, discusses how incorporating Infrastructure-as-Code into DevSecOps can allow teams to take a preventive approach to secure application connectivity . With customer demands changing at breakneck speed, organizations need to be agile to win in their digital markets. This requires fast and frequent application deployments, forcing DevOps teams to streamline their software development processes. However, without the right security tools placed in the early phase of the CI/CD pipeline, these processes can be counterproductive leading to costly human errors and prolonged application deployment backups. This is why organizations need to find the right preventive security approach and explore achieving this through Infrastructure-as-Code. Understanding Infrastructure as Code – what does it actually mean? Infrastructure-as-Code (Iac) is a software development method that describes the complete environment in which the software runs. It contains information about the hardware, networks, and software that are needed to run the application. IAC is also referred to as declarative provisioning or automated provisioning. In other words, IAC enables security teams to create an automated and repeatable process to build out an entire environment. This is helpful for eliminating human errors that can be associated with manual configuration. The purpose of IaC is to enable developers or operations teams to automatically manage, monitor and provision resources, rather than manually configure discrete hardware devices and operating systems. What does IaC mean in the context of running applications in a cloud environment When using IaC, network configuration files can contain your applications connectivity infrastructure connectivity specifications changes, which mkes it easier to edit, review and distribute. It also ensures that you provision the same environment every time and minimizes the downtime that can occur due to security breaches. Using Infrastructure as code (IaC) helps you to avoid undocumented, ad-hoc configuration changes and allows you to enforce security policies in advance before making the changes in your network. Top 5 challenges when not embracing a preventive security approach Counterintuitive communication channel – When reviewing the code manually, DevOps needs to provide access to a security manager to review it and rely on the security manager for feedback. This can create a lot of unnecessary back and forth communication between the teams which can be a highly counterintuitive process. Mismanagement of DevOps resources – Developers need to work on multiple platforms due to the nature of their work. This may include developing the code in one platform, checking the code in another, testing the code in a third platform and reviewing requests in a fourth platform. When this happens, developers often will not be alerted of any network risk or non-compliance issue as defined by the organization. Mismanagement of SecOps resources – At the same time, network security managers are also bombarded with security review requests and tasks. Yet, they are expected to be agile, which is impossible in case of manual risk detection. Inefficient workflow – Sometimes risk analysis process is skipped and only reviewed at the end of the CI/CD pipeline, which prolongs the delivery of the application. Time consuming review process – The risk analysis review itself can sometimes take more than 30 minutes long which can create unnecessary and costly bottlenecking, leading to missed rollout deadlines of critical applications Why it’s important to place security early in the development cycle Infrastructure-as-code (IaC) is a crucial part of DevSecOps practices. The current trend is based on the principle of shift-left, which places security early in the development cycle. This allows organizations to take a proactive, preventive approach rather than a reactive one. This approach solves the problem of developers leaving security checks and testing for the later stages of a project often as it nears completion and deployment. It is critical to take a proactive approach since late-stage security checks lead to two critical problems. Security flaws can go undetected and make it into the released software, and security issues detected at the end of the software development lifecycle demand considerably more time, resources and money to remediate than those identified early on. The Power of IaC Connectivity Risk Analysis and Key Benefits IaC connectivity risk analysis provides automatic and proactive connectivity risk analysis, enabling a frictionless workflow for DevOps with continuous customized risk analysis and remediation managed and controlled by the security managers. IaC Connectivity Risk Analysis enables organizations to use a single source of truth for managing the lifecycle of their applications. Furthermore, security engineers can use IaC to automate the design, deployment, and management of virtual assets across a hybrid cloud environment. With automated security tests, engineers can also continuously test their infrastructure for security issues early in the development phase. Key benefits Deliver business applications into production faster and more securely Enable a frictionless workflow with continuous risk analysis and remediation Reduce connectivity risks earlier in the CI/CD process Customizable risk policy to surface only the most critical risks The Takeaway Don’t get bogged down by security and compliance. When taking a preventive approach using a connectivity risk analysis via IaC, you can increase the speed of deployment, reduce misconfiguration and compliance errors, improve DevOps – SecOps relationship and lower costs Next Steps Let AlgoSec’s IaC Connectivity Risk Analysis can help you take a proactive, preventive security approach to get DevOps’ workflow early in the game, automatically identifying connectivity risks and providing ways to remediate them. Watch this video or visit us at GitHub to learn how. Schedule a demo Related Articles 2025 in review: What innovations and milestones defined AlgoSec’s transformative year in 2025? AlgoSec Reviews Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Navigating Compliance in the Cloud AlgoSec Cloud Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read 5 Multi-Cloud Environments Cloud Security Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Speak to one of our experts Speak to one of our experts Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Schedule a call

Partner solution brief AlgoSec and Illumio: stronger together Download PDF Schedule time with one of our experts Schedule time with one of our experts Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

Before I became a Sale Engineer I started my career working in operations and I don’t remember the first time I heard the term zero trust... Zero Trust AlgoSec and Zero-Trust for Healthcare Adolfo Lopez 2 min read Adolfo Lopez Short bio about author here Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Vitae donec tincidunt elementum quam laoreet duis sit enim. Duis mattis velit sit leo diam. Tags Share this article 2/26/24 Published Before I became a Sale Engineer I started my career working in operations and I don’t remember the first time I heard the term zero trust but I all I knew is that it was very important and everyone was striving to get to that level of security. Today I’ll get into how AlgoSec can help achieve those goals, but first let’s have a quick recap on what zero trust is in the first place. There are countless whitepapers and frameworks that define zero trust much better than I can, but they are also multiple pages long, so I’ll do a quick recap. Traditionally when designing a network you may have different zones and each zone might have different levels of access. In many of these types of designs there is a lot of trust that is given once they are in a certain zone. For example, once someone gets to their workplace at the hospital, the nursing home, the dental center or any other medical office and does all the necessary authentication steps (proper company laptop, credentials, etc…) they potentially have free reign to everything. This is a very simple example and in a real-world scenario there would hopefully be many more safeguards in place. But what does happen in real world scenarios is that devices still manage to get trusted more than they should. And from my own experience and from working with customers this happens way too often. Especially in the healthcare industry this is becoming more and more important. These days there are many different types of medical devices, some that hold sensitive information, some scanning instruments, and some that might even be critical to patient support. More importantly many are connected to some type of network. Because of this level of connectivity, we do need to start shifting toward this idea of zero trust. In healthcare cybersecurity isn’t just a matter of maintaining the network, it’s about maintaining the critical operations of the hospitals running smoothly and patient data safe and secure. Maintaining security policies is critical to achieving zero trust. Below you can see some of the key features that AlgoSec has that can help achieve that goal. Feature Description Security Policy Analysis Analyze existing security policy sets across all parts of the network (on-premises and cloud) with various vendors. Policy Cleanup Identify and remove redundant rules, duplicate rules, and more from the first report. Specific Recommendations Over time, recommendations become more specific, such as identifying unnecessary rules (e.g., a printer talking to a medical device without actual use). Application Perspective Tie firewall rules to actual applications to understand the business function they support, leading to more targeted security policies. Granularity & Visibility Higher level of visibility and granularity in security policies, focusing on specific application flows rather than broad network access. Security Posture by Application View and assess security risks and vulnerabilities at the application level, improving overall security posture. One of my favorite aspects of the AlgoSec platform is that we not only help optimize your security policies, but we also start to look at security from an application perspective. Traditionally, firewall change requests come in and it’s just asking for very specific things, “Source A to Destination B using Protocol C.” But using AlgoSec we tie those rules to actual applications to see what business function this is supporting. By knowing the specific flows and tying them to a specific application this allows us to keep a closer eye on the actual security policies we need to create. This helps with that zero trust journey because having that higher level of visibility and granularity helps to keep the rules more specific. Instead of a change request coming in that is allowing wide open access between two subnets the application can be designed for only the access that is required. It also allows for an overall better view of the security posture. Zero trust, like many other ideas and frameworks in our industry might seem farfetched at first. We ask ourselves, how do we get there or how do we implement without it becoming so cumbersome that we give up on it. I think it’s normal to be a bit pessimistic about achieving the goal and it’s completely fine to look at some projects as moving targets that we might not have a hard deadline on. There usually isn’t a magic bullet that accomplish our goals, especially something like achieving zero trust. Multiple initiatives and projects are necessary. With AlgoSec’s expertise in application connectivity and policy management, we can be a key partner in that journey. Schedule a demo Related Articles 2025 in review: What innovations and milestones defined AlgoSec’s transformative year in 2025? AlgoSec Reviews Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Navigating Compliance in the Cloud AlgoSec Cloud Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read 5 Multi-Cloud Environments Cloud Security Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Speak to one of our experts Speak to one of our experts Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Schedule a call

Learn about firewall rule automation and change management to streamline processes, reduce human error, and enhance network security with effective change controls. Firewall rule automation & change management explained Overview In today’s IT environment, the only constant is change. Not only is change rampant, but it often occurs at breakneck speed. Rapid business growth from mergers and acquisitions, development of new and de-commissioning of old applications, new users, micro-segmentation, cloud migrations and more make for a dynamic environment that poses new security challenges all the time. Schedule a Demo Introduction In today’s IT environment, the only constant is change. Not only is change rampant, but it often occurs at breakneck speed. For a variety of reasons – rapid business growth from mergers and acquisitions, development of new applications, de-commissioning of old applications, new users, evolving networks and evolving cyberthreats – business needs change and, as they do, so must security policies. But change comes with challenges, often leading to major headaches for IT operations and security teams. The headaches sometimes develop into huge business problems: Manual workflows and change management processes are time-consuming and impede IT from keeping up with the necessary business agility Improper management of even minor changes can lead to serious business risks as benign as blockage of legitimate traffic all the way to putting the entire network offline Some organizations have grown so wary of change control and its potential negative impact that they resort to network freezes during peak business times rather than attempt to implement an urgent change in their network security policies. AlgoSec has another point of view. We want to help you embrace change through process improvement, identifying areas where automation and actionable intelligence can simultaneously enhance security and business agility – without the headaches. Herein, you will learn the secrets of how to elevate your firewall change management from manual labor-intensive work to a fully automated change management process. Schedule a Demo Why is it so hard to make changes to network policies? Placing a sticky note on your firewall administrator’s desk and expecting the change request to be performed pronto does not constitute a formal policy. Yet, shockingly, this is common practice. A formal change request process is in order. Such a process dictates clearly defined and documented steps for how a change request is to be handled, by whom, how it is addressed within a specified SLA, and more. Using IT ticketing systems Popular IT ticketing systems, like ServiceNow and Remedy, are a good place to manage your firewall change requests. However, these system are built for tracking general requests and were never designed for handling complex requests such as opening the network flow from server A to server B or revising user groups. Informal change processes Having a policy state “this is what we must do” is a start, but without a formal set of steps for carrying out and enforcing that policy, you still have a long way to go in terms of smoothing out your change processes. In fact, the majority of challenges for managing network security devices include: Time-consuming manual processes Poor change-management processes Error-prone processes Firewall change management requires detailed and concise steps that everyone understands and follows. Exceptions must be approved and documented, continuously improving the process over time. Communication breakdown Network security and operations staff work in separate silos. Their goals, and even their languages, are different. Working in silos is a clear recipe for trouble. It is a major contributor to out-of-band (unexpected) changes which are notorious for resulting in “out-of-service.” In many large companies, routine IT operational and administrative tasks may be handled by a team other than the one that handles security and risk-related tasks. Although both teams work toward the same goal – smooth operation of the digital side of the business – decisions and actions made by one team may lead to problems for the other. Sometimes, these situations are alleviated in a rush with the good intention of dealing with security issues “later.” But this crucial “later” never arrives and the network remains open to breaches. In fact, according to a large-scale survey of our own customers, out-of-process firewall changes resulted in system outages for a majority of them. In addition, our customers pointed out that out-of-process changes have caused them exposure to data breaches and costly audit failures. How will you know if it’s broken? It’s imperative to know what the business is up against from the perspective of threats and vulnerabilities. What’s often overlooked, however, is the no-less-devastating impact of poorly managed firewall changes. Without carefully analyzing how even the most minor firewall changes are going to impact the network environment, businesses can suffer dramatic problems. Without thoughtful analysis, they might not know: What does the change do to vital visibility across the network? Which applications and connections are broken by this change? Which new security vulnerabilities are introduced? How will performance be affected? A lot of money and effort is put into keeping the bad guys out, while forgetting that “we have seen the enemy and he is us.” Network complexity is a security killer Renowned security expert, Bruce Schneier, has stated, “Complexity is the worst enemy of security.” The sheer complexity of any given network can lead to a lot of mistakes, especially when it comes to multiple firewalls with complex rule sets. Simplifying the firewall environment and management processes is necessary for good management. Did you know? Up to 30 percent of implemented rule changes in large firewall infrastructures are unnecessary because the firewalls are already allowing the requested traffic! Under time pressure, firewall administrators often create more rules which turn out to be redundant given already-existing rules. This wastes valuable time and makes the firewalls even harder to manage. Schedule a Demo Mind the gap? Not if you want a good change management process The introduction of new things opens up security gaps. New hires, software patches, upgrades and network updates all increase risk exposure. The situation is further complicated in larger organizations which may have a mixed security estate comprising traditional, next-generation and virtualized firewalls from multiple vendors across clouds and on-premise data centers, all with hundreds of policies and thousands of rules. Who can keep track of it all? What about unexpected, quick-fixes that enable access to certain resources or capabilities? In many cases, a fix is made in a rush (after all, who wants a C-level exec breathing down their neck because he wants to access the network from his new tablet RIGHT NOW?) without sufficient consideration of whether that change is allowable under current security policies, or if it introduces new exposures. Sure, you can’t predict when users will make change requests, but you can certainly prepare the process for handling these requests whenever they arise. Bringing both IT operations and security teams together to prepare game plans for these situations – and for other ‘knowns’ such as network upgrades, change freezes, and audits – helps to minimize the risk of security gaps. What’s more, there are solutions that automate day-to-day firewall management tasks and link these changes and procedures so that they are recorded as part of the change management plan. In fact, automated technologies can help bridge the gap between change management processes and what’s really taking place. They enhance accuracy, by removing people from the equation to a very large degree. For example, a sophisticated firewall and topology-aware workflow system that is able to identify redundant and unneeded change requests can increase the productivity of the IT staff. IT operations and security groups are ultimately responsible for making sure that systems are functioning properly so that business goals are continuously met. However, these teams approach business continuity from different perspectives. The security department’s number one goal is to protect the business and its data whereas the IT operations team is focused on keeping systems up and running. It is natural for these two teams to clash. However, oftentimes, IT operations and security teams align their perspectives because both have a crucial ownership stake. The business has to keep running AND it has to be secure. But this kind of alignment of interests is easier said than done. To achieve the alignment, organizations must re- examine current IT and security processes. Let’s have a look at some examples of what happens when alignment is not performed. Schedule a Demo Real-life examples of good changes gone bad Example 1 A classic lack of communication between the IT operations and security groups put XYZ Corporation at risk. An IT department administrator, who was trying to be helpful, took the initiative to set up (on his own, with no security involvement or documentation) an FTP share for a user who needed to upload files in a hurry. By making this off-the-cuff change, the IT admin quickly addressed the client’s request and the files were uploaded. However, the FTP account lingered unsecured well beyond its effective “use by” date. By the next day, the security team noticed larger spikes of inbound traffic to the server from this very FTP account. Hackers abound. The FTP site had been compromised and was being exploited to host pirated movies. Example 2 A core provider of e-commerce services to businesses in the U.S. suffered a horrible fate due to a simple, but poorly managed, firewall change. One day, all e-commerce transactions in and out of its network ceased and the entire business was taken offline for several hours. The costs were astronomical. What happened? An out-of-band (and untested) change to a core firewall broke the communication between the e-commerce application and the internet. Business activity ground to a halt. Executive management got involved and the responsible IT staff members were reprimanded. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the root cause of the outage was uncovered: IT staff, oblivious to the consequences, chose not to test their firewall changes, bypassing their “burdensome” ITIL-based change management procedures. Tips from your own peers Taken from The Big Collection of Firewall Management Tips Document, document, document … And when in doubt, document some more! “It is especially critical for people to document the rules they add or change so that other administrators know the purpose of each rule and whom to contact about it. Good documentation can make troubleshooting easy. It reduces the risk of service disruptions that inadvertently occur when an administrator deletes or changes a rule they do not understand.” – Todd, InfoSec Architect, United States “Keep a historical change log of your firewall policy so you can return to safe harbor in case something goes wrong. A proper change log should include the reason for the change, the requester and approval records.” – Pedro Cunha, Engineer, Oni, Portugal Schedule a Demo Taking the fire drill out of firewall changes Automation is the key. It helps staff disengage from firefighting and bouncing reactively between incidents. It helps them gain control. The right automation solution can help teams track down potential traffic or connectivity issues and highlight areas of risk. Administrators can get a handle on the current status of policy compliance across mixed estates of traditional, next-generation and virtualized firewalls as well as hybrid on-prem and cloud estates. The solution can also automatically pinpoint the devices that may require changes and show how to create and implement those changes in the most secure way. Automation not only makes firewall change management easier and more predictable across large estates and multiple teams, but also frees staff to handle more strategic security and compliance tasks. Let the solution handle the heavy lifting and free up the staff for other things. To ensure a proper balance between business continuity and security, look for a firewall policy management solution that: Measures every step of the change workflow so you can easily demonstrate that SLAs are being met Identifies potential bottlenecks and risks BEFORE changes are made Pinpoints change requests that require special attention Tips from your peers Taken from The Big Collection of Firewall Management Tips “Perform reconciliation between change requests and actual performed changes. Looking at the unaccounted changes will always surprise you. Ensuring every change is accounted for will greatly simplify your next audit and help in day-to-day troubleshooting.” – Ron, Manager, Australia “Have a workflow process for implementing a security rule from the user requesting change, through the approval process and implementation.” – Gordy, Senior Network Engineer, United States Schedule a Demo 10 steps to automating and standardizing the firewall change-management process Here is the secret to getting network security policy change management right. Once a request is made, a change-request process should include the following steps: Clarify the change request and determine the dependencies. Obtain all relevant information in the change request form (i.e., who is requesting the change and why). Get proper authorization for the change, matching it to specific devices and prioritizing it. Make sure you understand the dependencies and the impact on business applications, other devices and systems, etc. This usually involves multiple stakeholders from different teams. Validate that the change is necessary. AlgoSec research has found that up to 30% of changes are unnecessary. Weeding out redundant work can significantly improve IT operations and business agility. Perform a risk assessment. Before approving the change, thoroughly test it and analyze the results so as not to unintentionally open up the proverbial can of worms. Does the proposed change create a new risk in the security policy? You need to know this for certain BEFORE making the change. Plan the change. Assign resources, create and test your back-out plans, and schedule the change. Part of a good change plan involves having a backup plan in case a change goes unexpectedly wrong. This is also a good place in the process to ensure that everything is properly documented for troubleshooting or recertification purposes. Execute the change. Backup existing configurations, prepare target device(s) and notify appropriate workgroups of any planned outage and perform the actual change. Verify correct execution to avoid outages. Test the change, including affected systems and network traffic patterns. Audit and govern the change process. Review the executed change and any lessons learned. Having a non-operations-related group conduct the audit provides the necessary separation of duties and ensures a documented audit trail for every change. Measure SLAs. Establish new performance metrics and obtain a baseline measurement. Recertify policies. While not necessary for every rule change, part of your change management process should include a review and recertification of policies at an interval that you define (e.g., once a year). Oftentimes, rules are temporary – needed only for a certain period of time – but they are left in place beyond their active date. This step forces you to review why policies are in place, enabling you to improve documentation and to remove or tweak rules to align with the business. In some cases (e.g., data breach) a change to a firewall rule set must be made immediately, where, even with all the automation in the world, there is no time to go through the 10 steps. To address this type of situation, an emergency process should be defined and documented. Schedule a Demo Key capabiities to look for in a firewall change management solution Your workflow system must be firewall- and network-aware. This allows the system to gather the proper intelligence by pulling the configuration information from the firewalls to understand the current policies. Ultimately, this reduces the time it takes to complete many of the steps within the change process. In contrast, a general change management system will not have this integration and thus will provide no domain-specific expertise when it comes to making firewall rule changes. Your solution must support all of the firewalls and routers used within your organization. With the evolution of next-generation firewalls and new cloud devices, you should also consider how your plans fit into your firewall change-management decisions. In larger organizations, there are typically many firewalls from different vendors. If your solution cannot support all the devices in the environment (current and future), then this isn’t the solution for you! Your solution must be topology-aware. The solution must:Understand how the network is laid out Comprehend how the devices fit and interact Provide the necessary visibility of how traffic is flowing through the network Your solution must integrate with the existing general change management systems. This is important so that you can maximize the return on previously made investments. You don’t want to undergo a massive retraining on processes and systems simply because you have introduced a new solution. This integration allows users to continue using their familiar systems, but with the added intelligence from having that firewall-aware visibility and understanding that the new solution delivers. Your solution must provide out-of-the-box change workflows to streamline change-management processes as well as be highly customizable since no two organizations’ network and change processes are exactly the same. Key workflow capabilities to look for in a solution:Provide out-of-the-box change workflows to help you quickly tackle common change-request scenarios Offer the ability to tailor the change process to your unique business needs by: Creating request templates that define the information required to start a change process and pre-populate information where possible Enabling parallel approval steps within the workflow — ideal when multiple approvals are required to process a change Influencing the workflow according to dynamic information obtained during ticket processing (e.g., risk level, affected firewalls, urgency, ) Ensuring accountability and increasing corporate governance with logic that routes change requests to specific roles throughout the workflow Identify which firewalls and rules block requested traffic Detect and filter unneeded/redundant requests for traffic that is already permitted Provide “what-if” risk-analysis to ensure compliance with regulations and policies Automatically produce detailed work orders, indicating which new or existing rules to add or edit and which objects to create or reuse Prevent unauthorized changes by automatically matching detected policy changes with request tickets and reporting on mismatches Ensure that change requests have actually been implemented on the network, preventing premature closing of tickets Schedule a Demo Out-of-the-box workflow examples The best solutions allow for: Adding new rules via a wizard-driven request process and flow that includes impact analysis, change validation and audit Changing rules and objects by easily defining the requests for creation, modification and deletion, and identifying rules affected by suggested object modifications for best impact analysis Removing rules by automatically retrieving a list of change requests related to the rule-removal request, notifying all requestors of the impending change, managing the approval process, documenting and validating removal Recertifying rules by automatically presenting all tickets with deadlines to the responsible party for recertification or rejection and maintaining a full audit trail with actionable reporting Quantifying the ROI on firewall change-control automation Schedule a Demo Cut your costs Manual firewall change management is a time-consuming and error-prone process. Consider a typical change order that requires a total of four hours of work by several team members during the change lifecycle, including communication, validation, risk assessment, planning and design, execution, verification, documentation, auditing and measurement. Based on these assumptions, AlgoSec customers have reported significant cost savings (as much as 60%) achieved through: Reduction of 50% in processing time using automation Elimination of 30% of unnecessary changes Elimination of 8% of changes that are reopened due to incorrect implementation Schedule a Demo Summary While change management is complex stuff, the decision for your business is actually simple. You can continue to slowly chug along with manual change management processes that drain your IT resources and impede agility. Or you can accelerate your processes with an automated network change- management workflow solution that aligns the different stakeholders involved in the process (network operations, network security, compliance, business owners, etc.) and helps the business run more smoothly. Think of your change process as a key component of the engine of an expensive car (in this case, your organization). Would you drive your car at high speed if you didn’t have tested, dependable brakes or a steering wheel? Hopefully, the answer is no! The brakes and steering wheel are analogous to change controls and processes. Rather than slowing you down, they actually make you go faster, securely! Power steering and power brakes (in this case, firewall-aware integration and automation) help you zoom to success. Let's start your journey to our business-centric network Schedule a Demo Select a size Overview Introduction Why is it so hard to make changes to network policies? Mind the gap? Not if you want a good change management process Real-life examples of good changes gone bad Taking the fire drill out of firewall changes 10 steps to automating and standardizing the firewall change-management process Key capabiities to look for in a firewall change management solution Out-of-the-box workflow examples Cut your costs Summary 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. Australia’s Leading Superannuation Provider Organization Retirement fund Industry Financial Services Headquarters Australia Download case study Share Customer
success stories "It’s very easy to let security get left behind. We want to make sure that security is not a roadblock to business performance,” said Bryce. “We need to be agile and we need to make sure we can deploy systems to better support our members. Automation can really help you see that return-on-investment." Network Security Policy Automation helps Superannuation company reduce costs to provide higher returns to members Background The company is one of Australia’s leading superannuation (pension) providers. Their job is to protect their client’s money, information, and offer long-term financial security. Challenges The company’s firewalls were managed by a Managed Service Security Provider (MSSP) and there had not been enough insight and analysis into their network over the years, leading to a bloated and redundant network infrastructure. Firewalls and infrastructure did not get the care and attention they needed. As a result, some of their challenges included: Legacy firewalls that had not been adequately maintained Difficulty identifying and quantifying network risk Lack of oversight and analysis of the changes made by their Managed Services Security Provider (MSSP) Change requests for functionality that was already covered by existing rules The Solution The customer was searching for a solution that provided: A strong local presence Repeatable and recordable change management processes As a result, the customer implemented AlgoSec. The client selected AlgoSec’s Security Policy Management Solution, which includes AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer and AlgoSec FireFlow. AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer delivers visibility and analysis of complex network security policies across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid networks. It automates and simplifies security operations including troubleshooting, auditing, and risk analysis. Using Firewall Analyzer, they can optimize the configuration of firewalls, and network infrastructure to ensure security and compliance. AlgoSec FireFlow enables security staff to automate the entire security policy change process from design and submission to proactive risk analysis, implementation, validation, and auditing. Its intelligent, automated workflows save time and improve security by eliminating manual errors and reducing risk. The Results “Straight away, we were able to see a return-on-investment,” said Stefan Bryce, Security Manager, a leading Australian superannuation provider. By using the AlgoSec Security Management Solution, the customer gained: Greater insight and oversight into their firewalls and other network devices Identification of risky rules and other holes in their network security policy. Easier cleanup process due to greater visibility Audits and accountability into their network security policy changes. They were able to ensure ongoing compliance and make sure that rules submitted did not introduce additional risk Identification and elimination of duplicate rules Faster implementation of policy changes Business agility and innovation because employees are better motivated to make changes due to seamless policy change process. Consolidation of their virtual firewall internal infrastructure Reduced ongoing costs to their MSSP Schedule time with one of our experts

Survey finds that 58% of respondents are concerned about security in the cloud, while misconfigurations are one of the leading causes of breaches and outages as public cloud adoption doubles over past two years Cloud Security Alliance Releases Latest Survey Report on State of Cloud Security Concerns, Challenges, and Incidents Survey finds that 58% of respondents are concerned about security in the cloud, while misconfigurations are one of the leading causes of breaches and outages as public cloud adoption doubles over past two years March 30, 2021 Speak to one of our experts SEATTLE – March 30, 2021 – The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, and AlgoSec , a leading provider of business-driven network and cloud security management solutions, today announced the results of a new study titled, “ State of Cloud Security Concerns, Challenges, and Incidents .” The survey, which queried nearly 1,900 IT and security professionals from a variety of organization sizes and locations, sought to gain deeper insight into the complex cloud environment that continues to emerge and that has only grown more complex since the onset of the pandemic. The survey found that over half of organizations are running 41 percent or more of their workloads in public clouds, compared to just one-quarter in 2019. In 2021, 63 percent of respondents expect to be running 41 percent or more of their workloads in public cloud, indicating that adoption of public cloud will only continue. Sixty-two percent of respondents use more than one cloud provider, and the diversity of production workloads (e.g. container platforms, virtual machines) is also expected to increase. Key findings include: Security tops concerns with cloud projects : Respondents’ leading concerns over cloud adoption were network security (58%), a lack of cloud expertise (47%), migrating workloads to the cloud (44%), and insufficient staff to manage cloud environments (32%). It’s notable that a total of 79 percent of respondents reported staff-related issues, highlighting that organizations are struggling with handling cloud deployments and a largely remote workforce. Cloud issues and misconfigurations are leading causes of breaches and outages : Eleven percent of respondents reported a cloud security incident in the past year with the three most common causes being cloud provider issues (26%), security misconfigurations (22%), and attacks such as denial of service exploits (20%). When asked about the impact of their most disruptive cloud outages, 24 percent said it took up to 3 hours to restore operations, and for 26 percent it took more than half a day. Nearly one-third still manage cloud security manually : Fifty-two percent of respondents stated they use cloud-native tools to manage security as part of their application orchestration process, and 50 percent reported using orchestration and configuration management tools such as Ansible, Chef and Puppet. Twenty-nine percent said they use manual processes to manage cloud security. Who controls cloud security is not clear-cut : Thirty-five percent of respondents said their security operations team managed cloud security, followed by the cloud team (18%), and IT operations (16%). Other teams such as network operations, DevOps and application owners all fell below 10 percent, showing confusion over exactly who owns public cloud security. “The use of cloud services has continued to increase over the past decade. Particularly now, in the wake of the COVID-19 public health crisis. With organizations struggling to address a largely remote workforce, many enterprises’ digital transformations have been accelerated to enable employees to work from home,” said Hillary Baron, lead author and research analyst, Cloud Security Alliance. “As an ever-more complex cloud environment continues to evolve, the need for supplementary security tools to improve public cloud security will, as well.” “In the face of complex environments, a dearth of security staff, and an overall lack of cloud knowledge, organizations are turning to security tools that can help supplement their workforce. Three of the top four benefits organizations look for in security management tools involve proactive detection of risks and automation. These types of tools can supplement the challenges many organizations are experiencing with lack of expertise (47%) and staff (32%), as well as improve visibility as they move toward an ever-changing cloud environment,” said Jade Kahn, AlgoSec Chief Marketing Officer.AlgoSec commissioned the survey to add to the industry’s knowledge about hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud security. Sponsors of CSA research are CSA Corporate Members, who support the findings of the research project but have no added influence on content development nor editing rights. The report and its findings are vendor-agnostic and allow for global participation. Download the free eBook now. About Cloud Security Alliance The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. CSA harnesses the subject matter expertise of industry practitioners, associations, governments, and its corporate and individual members to offer cloud security-specific research, education, training, certification, events, and products. CSA’s activities, knowledge, and extensive network benefit the entire community impacted by cloud — from providers and customers to governments, entrepreneurs, and the assurance industry — and provide a forum through which different parties can work together to create and maintain a trusted cloud ecosystem. For further information, visit us at www.cloudsecurityalliance.org , and follow us on Twitter @cloudsa. About AlgoSec The leading provider of business-driven network security management solutions, AlgoSec helps the world’s largest organizations align security with their mission-critical business processes. With AlgoSec, users can discover, map and migrate business application connectivity, proactively analyze risk from the business perspective, tie cyber-attacks to business processes and intelligently automate network security changes with zero touch – across their cloud, SDN and on-premise networks. Over 1,800 enterprises, including 20 of the Fortune 50, have utilized AlgoSec’s solutions to make their organizations more agile, more secure and more compliant – all the time. Since 2005, AlgoSec has shown its commitment to customer satisfaction with the industry’s only money-back guarantee. www.algosec.com

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