Optimizing the delicate balance between networking and security

As a C-level executive, one of your technological responsibilities may involve managing the delicate balance between security and network utility and openness. Today’s markets often favor those companies that embrace new digital business initiatives that can transform the way they perceive, plan, work and respond. These typically involve a greater level of connectivity between companies, partners and customers, and new levels of transparency and collaboration. Such virtues are, in essence, enabled by the opposite of security.

At the same time, stakes are increasingly higher for data breach losses and privacy violations, theft of company secrets or intellectual property, and ransomware or other attacks that bring corporate operations to a screeching stop. Security is more difficult and complex, as perimeter security is no longer enough and the corporate network ceases to be something that is in one physical location.

There has always been significant asymmetry between security operations (SecOps) and networking operations (NetOps) teams and the priorities and initiatives of each within companies, but today, establishing the right balance could not be more imperative. NetOps has been about access and tight dependencies on traditional operational support system (OSS) processes, whereas SecOps has been about the polar opposite: protection or control. In some ways, executives are caught between a rock and a hard place. While there is increased interest and acceptance of both sides working more closely to produce the best result for the business, the task is still complex and fundamentally one of putting together two opposites.

Technology has been a prime contributor to this tension, but recent advances in technology may also help solve or soften the issues. One advancement is the sharing of common infrastructure that can accomplish the objectives of SecOps and NetOps. Generally, today, security teams have their own equipment and applications, and networking has its own. The network itself is something both deal with, but NetOps teams usually own the means to access the network and SecOps teams own the means to apply non-utility measures to the traffic on the network. There is distinctly a “your stuff” and “my stuff” delineation.

New technologies are enabling networking and security to join together through platforms and processes that serve both. The primary contention between SecOps and NetOps is protection and control that safeguards users, data, systems and infrastructure while not preventing business-necessary access and the performance and reliability of the network. For example, at Niagara Networks, our intelligent cross-connect platform is designed to ensure carrier-level performance, availability, reliability and scalability of the network while enabling new access to network traffic for network security solutions to monitor for attacks and curtail them. It’s designed for the needs of both NetOps and SecOps.

―Forbes