While the number of cyberattacks skyrockets each passing day, cybersecurity practices also evolve to fight with them. At first, the idea was never to let data breaches happen; but unfortunately, they did.
So now, security teams work to minimize the effects of a successful attack. One example of this is network segmentation; a measure to keep the whole network from getting compromised. Let’s learn all about network segmentation and see what are the best practices.
What is network segmentation?
IBM’s report reveals that a single data breach affecting the whole network can take up to 280 days to deal with. So IT security teams need a way to tame a potential data breach.
That’s where network segmentation comes into play. Implementing network segmentation means that the IT team is categorizing the network into smaller components or segments. Thus, they can assign individual roles to employees and control access to each component.
Just as employees don’t have access to the whole network, neither do malicious users or eavesdroppers. Meaning that once you segment your network, any successful data breach on one of your network components will be isolated and controlled. Even if a segment is breached, the rest is still up and running, the damage is much more acceptable and fixable.
Network segmentation best practices
1-) Don’t under or over-segment
One of the most challenging issues of network segmentation is the degree of segmentation. You need to be cautious not to over or under-segment.
Segmenting the network further than you need might create difficulties for employees. Not to mention some of them won’t be able to perform tasks with too restricted access permissions.
Under-segmentation on the other hand will pose security risks to your network. The best way to divide the network just right is knowing about the employees’ needs to do their jobs.
Specify everyone’s work description and segment properly. You can read more about proper segmentation planning and execution.
2-) Restrict third-party access
Third-party access can be very dangerous for company networks. Forrester’s 2020 report showed that 46% of data breaches were caused by insiders or third parties.
So be careful not to give too many privileges and minimize attack surfaces by restricting third-party access. You can create specific segments completely separate from your main network just for the third parties.
3-) Perform regular network audits
Corporate networks can be very complicated, especially with a micro-level structure such as network segmentation. There can be flaws you never realized, but you need to detect these and take action.
Monitor your network regularly, inspect for security gaps and missing parts in your network structure. Update according to your findings, always learn about employees and their needs. Doing these in a scheduled way will ensure your network is always up-to-date.
4-) Facilitate authorization & complicate illegal access
Keep network segmentation straightforward enough to provide users effortless secure access. Especially don’t let the legitimate network access be more complicated than the illegal one. You might think it will increase security, but it’s the opposite.
If network segmentation results in an overly complicated and annoying access process, revise your architecture and make sure it delivers a good user experience.
Conclusion
Network segmentation is a great idea to minimize the impact of data breaches as they can always happen. By dividing the network into smaller components, you can isolate the compromised section and save the others.
But segmenting a network can yield negative results if not properly done by following the best practices. So our suggestion is to emphasize the points mentioned above to segment networks in a straightforward, secure, and user-friendly way.