Advanced Firewall Management
We ensure your firewalls give you the same effective
protection they did on day one.
Make Sure Your Firewalls Provide Maximum Protection Over Time
Firewalls are fundamental to your infrastructure security layers, but tend to lose effectiveness over time if not closely managed. CISO’s Advanced Firewall Management ensures your firewalls give you the same effective protection they did on day one.
CISO Advanced Firewall Management
Start with a Formal Configuration Review
Whether we are helping install new– or working with existing– firewalls, a comprehensive review of your organization’s business requirements, security policies, and compliance framework(s) will ensure that your firewalls are configured for maximum effectiveness to protect you from attacks.
Identify weaknesses in your current network device configurations
Devices can be updated proactively, reducing the risk of a security incident.
Catch Device Inconsistencies
Our team’s management and oversight ensures that if you roll out a new firewall, the security controls are aligned to follow your policies. Or, if someone changes security control settings on any firewall, it will be investigated returned to a secure, compliant state.
Block Known Threats
With a full NOC and 24/7/365 Security Operations Center, CISO Global maintains numerous threat feeds, participates in threat sharing communities, and draws from trends we see while remediating other attacks across many environment types to proactively protect our Managed Firewall clients from connecting to known bad IPs.
Manage Rule Sets Over Time
You can ensure that all changes are documented, tracked, and traceable, and that controls maintain their original effectiveness, because they are not weakened over time with changes or exceptions.
Protect Against Data Loss
The Data Loss Prevention (DLP) component of our Advanced Firewall Management service (for DLP firewalls) enables us to detect, monitor, and prevent unauthorized transmission of sensitive corporate information outside your network or across network boundaries. The content control rules allow us to identify and monitor violations of those rules, documenting with a DLP report that allows you to evaluate and demonstrate employee compliance with your information security policies.
Block Dangerous Websites
CISO Global will work with your organization to understand what kinds of sites are necessary for business processes, allowing or monitoring access to those sites as needed. Then, to otherwise manage access and communication channels, managed firewalls will be configured to Block, Warn, Allow, or Monitor websites.
Keep Firewalls Patched and Up-to-Date
CISO Global will keep your firewalls patched and up-to-date, performing this service on your behalf. Our deep bench of expertise includes specialists who focus on complex firewalls daily and maintain the certifications and specialized knowledge that enables them to address this burden quickly and easily on your behalf. Further, drawing from threat intelligence in our 24x7x365 SOC, when information about attack trends that relate to our clients’ infrastructure providers comes in, our teams will proactively get ahead of attacks that exploit known vulnerabilties to hunt for threats in the environment, while ensuring that vulnerabilities have been remediated as a preventative, proactive measure.
Do my firewalls need to be PCI DSS or HIPAA compliant?
Compliance frameworks such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and the GDPR require your firewalls to be properly configured, maintained, and aligned to your network as part of the security controls that help you establish a compliant security strategy. If you use an outsourced provider to take on your firewall management, you might want to investigate their level of compliance and expertise in these frameworks. CISO is a certified PCI QSA (Qualified Security Assessor) and specializes in compliance frameworks, including but not limited to PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, CMMC, TPN, NERC CIP, and more. Our experts are very well equipped to help you meet and maintain compliance in every part of your environment.
You have internal experts, so why do you need AFM?
Technologists develop strengths and expertise specific to the demands of their environment. In most cases, firewalls are not on the list of daily tasks that must be completed to keep your systems up and running smoothly. Undoubtedly your teams have wide expertise. However, the level of firewall expertise required for ongoing patching, remediation, and potentially even reconfiguration is not likely on that list.
What if just one firewall slips through the cracks?
Current and diligent monitoring is required to keep even one firewall in good standing day after day. Most organizations have multiple, if not scores, of firewalls, so the chances are high that one or more of them will fall out of step with ever-changing systems without getting noticed. This can have implications for ongoing compliance requirements and put you at risk for a serious security incident., and it’s the rule– not the exception– that at least one firewall is typically out of date or misconfigured even at major corporations.
How often do firewalls really need to be reviewed?
The problem with getting your firewalls configured properly up-front, then focusing on other parts of your network, is that they do change over time and can lose effectiveness. Pulling your firewall information into our 24/7/365 Security Operations Center and working with teams in our Network Operations Center, CISO will provide regular reviews and assessments of your firewall configurations, ensuring they remain secure and compliant. If you aren’t keeping a daily eye on your firewalls, you could be missing something important.
If you wish to keep firewall management in-house, make sure have a firewall expert on team. It will be essential to allow that expert to focus on firewalls and resist the temptation to make their functions multi-purpose. Specialization means working with tools daily, and it’s very difficult to stay on top of change management, certifications, etc. when one has to fight to do so in-between other tasks.
With CISO managing your firewalls, you’ll know they’re always up-to-date and that you’re getting the protection you need!
Common Firewall Problems
Why They Happen
Likely Result
Networks change over time, so preexisting protocols and controls lose relevance or become misaligned.
Ongoing operational update projects like network segmentation, migrations, new systems, digital transformation, etc. help you keep IT systems in-step with new and evolving business goals.
If firewalls are not properly realigned, could mistakenly allow too much access to systems housing sensitive data, or too little access to non-sensitive systems. This can result in compliance violations, serious breaches, fines, legal fallout, and more.
People change settings post-rollout.
Typically, they just want to free themselves up for daily tasks, perhaps even meaning to return the settings, but they forget.
If someone doesn’t catch and fix changes to your system, it can leave you wide open to a serious attack that would otherwise be easy to stop. This scenario is a common oversight.
New patches and updates are released regularly, but firewalls are typically last on IT Teams’ patching list.
Firewall patches and updates can be more complex, requiring specialized knowledge & expertise. Fear of breaking something often keeps teams from tackling these alongside other patches and updates.
Unpatched vulnerabilities can make your firewalls prime targets for attackers. One of your fundamental security layers can actually become the avenue for attack.
Speak with a CISO Global Security Specialist Today
Our experts maintain the most respected credentials in
the industry across cybersecurity, risk and compliance,
forensics, incident response, ethical hacking, IEEE®
certified biometrics, security engineering, and more.
