Practices in network security monitoring

Update your deployment considerations

By Joe Guerra, Cybersecurity Instructor, Hallmark University

In the past decade, Cybersecurity departments have been tasked with applying solutions  to answer the question:

• How to protect and secure everything?

 While some cyber departments approach this question with a pre-determined set of guidelines it becomes imperative to take out that change management plan and start modifying for the present and future. In most occasions, the technologies out there are so powerful or transformational to an organization that leaves no option than to immediately adapt and use them. Frequently, arrangements need to be talked about between business and IT sectors to reach a security agreement. Whether to either accept, mitigate, transfer or eliminate the risk.

Nonetheless, the security operatives need to know what to protect and how to protect the assets that need security. In the past, network people usually relied on universal, already-made monitoring tools and templates for security. While in reality, the security infrastructure should have rigorously designed strategies to scale up techniques and tools as the network advances.

In order to address this spreading challenge,  the basic trust beliefs around cybersecurity need to be revisited. The contemporary cyber strategies have to be composed on the realization that breaches are imminent and inevitable. Specifically, since the primary channel that interconnects the physical, remote, and virtual environments is the network. The network carries the traffic that opens the window to the organization for malware and threats. Many security tools can monitor and analyze network traffic for anomalies, threats, and malware movement. However, it doesn’t matter how sophisticated these tools become, they will only work for as what the network traffic it sees.

Being involved in network security monitoring requires collecting packet data, separating it from other layers, and implementing security algorithms to answer pressing security-related dilemmas. The reason why this is done is to find out in real-time what is happening on the infrastructure at a meticulous level and bolster up security by hardening policies, devices, software, and processes.

Although, there is no particular list of considerations to span all possible scenarios; you can still enumerate a variety of points on a checklist to follow for a network system.

Practices to Follow

• Assess what you need to secure and where it is
• Perform a performance baseline before adding a security solution, since it can also have its own digital footprint on the
• Deploy more than one anti-virus component, since a combo effect is always
• Monitor all aspects and layers in your network infrastructure, from extranet to
• Make sure to consider all of the protocols in your Leave no stone unturned.
• Make sure to enable the auditing levels on the deployed

In relation to these best practices, make sure to have an update in the deploying process whenever a new appliance or software is modified in the network. However, even in the midst of having no modifications, it is essential to review the security process in a cautious and accurate manner to stay up to date with the capricious nature of cybersecurity situations.

While there is a multitude of means to monitor your network, it is imperative to keep up and apply the industry’s standards. The security team needs to be in the know of the state and proceedings of their network, at the moment and gradually if possible with the proper change management implement the new technologies. With cyber security being a methodology that is constantly improving it is essential to evolve with the infrastructure and devices being used.

In conclusion, network deployment strategies are crucial for the state of health of the organization, and a solid-dynamic monitoring structure will assist in alleviating expenses and harm to the organization.

About the Author

Joe Guerra, Cybersecurity Instructor, Hallmark University. Joe Guerra is a cybersecurity/computer programming instructor at Hallmark  University. He has 12 years of teaching/training experience in software and information technology development. Joe has been involved in teaching information systems security and secure software development towards industry certifications.  Initially, Joe was a software developer working in Java, PHP,  and  Python projects. Now, he is focused on training the new generation of Cyber first responders at Hallmark University.