Posted by
Frank Andrus on
October 3rd, 2016
Cyber Security, Cyber Threats, Enterprise Networks, Network Access Control, Network Security, Network Visibility, Threat Response
Enterprise organizations are appealing targets for hackers. These networks can provide everything from valuable personal data profiles, to financial and research data – all valuable commodities on the dark web. The interest in targeted enterprise attacks has increased dramatically, with the number of enterprise users attacked by cyber threats almost doubling from 7% in 2014 to 13% in 2015.[i]
With the rise of BYOD and IoT devices, enterprise wired and wireless networks are experiencing a dramatic increase in the size of their attack surface. With the average cost of a data breach reaching a staggering $4 million,[ii] enterprise organizations should re-evaluate whether the network and devices accessing the network are protected as part of a comprehensive security posture.
Why is the Enterprise a Target?
Enterprise organizations offer hackers a large attack surface, valuable data and a history of not being able to detect breaches in a timely manner. The average network data breach remains undetected for 229 days[iii] — making enterprise organizations appealing targets, as the hacker can be long gone before a breach is ever discovered. Enterprise organizations offer hackers:
- A large volume of data. Across industries, there is a high volume of personal data, as well as potential social security numbers, credit card information, corporate research, insider information and medical or other financial data.
- Numerous network and data access points. With today’s global economy, enterprise organizations generally have a number of diverse geographic locations, satellite offices and access points. In addition to diverse locations, most enterprise organizations have partners, such as service centers, cloud service suppliers and other outsourced service suppliers that also have access to the network. The amount of access points and the variety of enterprise information hackers can target is staggering.
- High volumes of network users. Enterprise organizations frequently have a large number of employees, partners and guests accessing the network onsite and from remote locations. These busy, high-traffic networks make it easier for hackers to hide.
- Disparate silos of information and security. Many enterprise organizations grow through acquisition. This can mean multiple silos of information, as well as different software and security standards in multiple locations. Diverse systems are time-consuming and challenging to manage, which can lead to delays in security patches, inadequate network oversight, slow triage of security events, difficulty finding contextual information and much more.
Providing a secure environment with such a high number of access points and an extremely busy network is a huge challenge. With thousands of alerts per day, and sometimes overwhelming network traffic, many enterprise organizations are looking for an overarching and comprehensive security solution.
Securing Enterprise Networks
The good news is that Bradford Networks product, Network Sentry, is a leading Security Automation and Orchestration solution that accommodates the diverse technologies and geographic locations challenges presented by enterprise networks. Our complete security solution offers:
- Comprehensive Endpoint and Network Visibility with full context
- Dynamic Network Access Control
- Automated Threat Response and Containment
Network Sentry helps manage the entire network security lifecycle, from beginning to end, and integrates with your existing security solutions to further enhance and secure your network. Our solution covers these three stages of network security oversight:
- Visibility. You can’t solve a problem unless you can see it. We provide complete network visibility – including profiles for every endpoint and device on your network to ensure you can track and monitor all activity. Every BYOD, IoT, corporate or guest device that connects to your network is profiled so you can see every endpoint and user who accesses the network.
- Control. Once you have profiles for all devices and endpoints, Network Sentry provides the invaluable context around each connection and event. This data enables us to provide policy-based network access control, historical and contextual data to analyze and prioritize security alerts and dynamically adjust network access for vulnerable or compromised endpoints. Our platform saves enterprise organizations a significant amount of time with scalable onboarding of thousands of employees, guests and partners in a short period of time. Network access can be provisioned by selecting a standard or pre-defined profile rather than individually configuring privileges for each user.
- Response. With most enterprise organizations receiving thousands of security alerts per day, we help streamline and triage the threat alert review process for your security analysts. Network Sentry eliminates error-prone manual intervention and streamlines multi-step workflows to enable automated response for security events, ticketing systems integration and end-point containment. Our software ingests security events from third-party threat prevention, detection and vulnerability assessment solutions, applies context to identify and prioritize critical events and automatically undertakes pre-defined threat containment actions to mitigate risks of data breach.
With historical roots and proven success in the Education space that typically operates like a “wild-west” in terms of compatibility with variety of endpoint and network devices, requiring large scale onboarding, and support for multiple campus networks, Network Sentry is especially well suited for enterprises that demand product stability, scalability and integrations with leading security solutions.
For more information on securing enterprise networks, watch our video: Securing the “Internet of Things” When Everything has an IP Address, or contact us at 1 (866) 990-3799.
[i] http://virusguides.com/crypto-ransomware-attacks-increase-almost-500-percent/
[ii] https://www.ponemon.org/news-2/71
[iii] https://www.ponemon.org/news-2/71
