A new Skybox survey has highlighted the challenges network and infrastructure professionals face, and the tools they believe will help them overcome those challenges.
John Stevenson, Senior Product Marketing Manager Skybox Security, says the survey of over 500 network security professionals in the UK and North America examined the impact of an over-reliance on manual firewall management processes, and explored how network security misconfigurations threaten security, compliance and operational uptime.
The report, entitled the Butterfly Effect, found that network managers spend over half their working week remediating misconfigurations and carrying out manual tasks that could be automated, and that over 90% of organisations fear failing compliance audits due to preventable misconfigurations. It also illustrated the unintended consequences of seemingly small changes in a network.
The survey found that even simple changes create significant bottlenecks: on average, organisations must complete eight separate manual stages to process a firewall change from request to verification. Multi-stage manual firewall changes create significant bureaucratic bottlenecks and introduce the risks of mistakes and delays.
Stevenson says: “The report was named the Butterfly Effect because of the notion that people are making a simple change in one area and, unbeknownst to them, like the fluttering of a butterfly's wings, it has rippling consequences elsewhere in the network, such as misconfigurations that that have potentially damaging consequences.
“A key takeaway from this survey is that automation could slash the costs and time network wasted on manual tasks and correcting errors,” he says. “This type of manual work is boring and mundane, and mistakes get made. This impacts compliance audits, which raises concerns about failing audits. Over 70% said they have had audits that identified multiple failures over the past five years. ‘Audit phobia’ is not new, but failure is now preventable.”
He adds: “Survey respondents also said they were terrified of failing audits and that they regularly do, at least two in every five years. These failures are due to preventable misconfigurations.”
Seventy-eight percent of the network professionals surveyed said they believed automation would have the greatest impact on these network management challenges, freeing up their time to acquire new skills, work on more strategic issues and reduce the amount of time they work outside of contracted hours.
“It’s not surprising that respondents wanted some automation to make their lives easier, eliminating manual tasks and misconfigurations, dealing with administrative bottlenecks and addressing compliance issues,” Stevenson says. “The findings point to a need for security policy management solutions that boost efficiency, increase agility and dramatically cut costs with smart automation for network security policy management.”
Skybox’s advanced Security Policy Management addresses process inefficiency, bottlenecks and risks with smart automation for network security policy management, smarter network visibility, automated workflows and access path analysis and automated firewall change management.
Share