Page 58 - Cyber Defense eMagazine August 2024

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• Review Processes: Periodic review of access rules, regardless of whether they protect legacy
networks, cloud, or edge environments, is often neglected, rendering the security policies con-
nected to them both stagnant and vulnerable.

• Out of Process Changes: Another issue is that team members sometimes make policy modifi-
cations without adhering to any controls whatsoever. Adjusting or updating rules outside of the
approved process not only undermines the integrity of the security infrastructure as a whole - but
also introduces unforeseen vulnerabilities.

• Urgent Changes: In the frenzied quest to resolve issues swiftly, changes are sometimes imple-
mented hastily, often without due approval or documentation. Many of these changes are in-
tended to be temporary in nature, but reverting back to the original rules after the fact rarely hap-
pens. Taking a "band-aid" approach to adjusting security policy only exacerbates the larger prob-
lem, creating clutter and leaving the system susceptible to exploitation as urgent changes are not
documented well, forgotten forever, or have unintended consequences.

• Documentation: Proper documentation is seen as a chore, and is either sorely inadequate or
relegated to an afterthought. Security teams are forced to grapple with the task of identifying and
rectifying misconfigurations or vulnerabilities - often at times when speed is critical. A lack of in-
formation not only slows them down, but can hinder their ability to accurately understand the
situation. Conducting audits or confirming regulatory compliance without accurate, updated infor-
mation is also a nightmare for security teams.

• Fear: A prevailing fear of disrupting the status quo inhibits teams from removing redundant or
conflicting rules. Because there is so little knowledge or documentation about existing rules, the
possibility of inadvertently causing application or network outages looms large. Proactive rule
optimization efforts are often abandoned out of fear, or left to become “the next person’s problem.”
While the saying goes “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” - an accumulation of unnecessary rules clutters
the security framework, compounding its inefficiencies, and opening companies up to other prob-
lems in the future.

Any one of these could be the cause for security policy optimization challenges, and lead to organizational
security issues that result in a breach or attack. The truth of the situation is that many organizations have
several of these issues impacting their policies and rules - at the same time. With stagnant security budg-
ets and the ongoing battle for organizations to find and retain cybersecurity talent, it is easy to see how
these issues can snowball if left unaddressed for too long. No one likes to clean up after the party.
It is also easy to see that security teams need help in order to overcome these issues and establish a
lean and efficient security policy. That’s why embracing automation is so important. Automation is a must-
have for today’s organizations; without it, teams find it impossible to catch up and work on truly optimizing
their processes.

Embracing Automation - Critically Important, But Often Not Enough
Security automation is often seen as the solution for the need to get more out of existing resources, while
still being able to fight the good fight against attackers. But just implementing automated tools is not
enough; to truly address the problems above once and for all and optimize your security policies there
are specific best practices to follow.

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