View the entire newsletter for more articles: 2022 – NJAC County Biz – August
by David Cumbow, Principal Solutions Architect for Palo Alto Networks
New Jersey local government agencies have technical infrastructure that spans from regular business networks, to service provider offerings, to public safety and other critical services. When greenfield projects do come along, we tend to focus on applying our security frameworks with controls that are unique to that deployment. This results in a story that we are all familiar with – nonintegrated, siloed security solutions with various maturity levels. What should New Jersey local governments do to remedy this? Defining a clear security strategy and establishing a consistent security policy is a must.
Your Cybersecurity Strategy
Frameworks help provide guidance as a means to an end, and the structure for implementing security controls in the environment. Furthermore, it’s important to consider compliance requirements within your frameworks. CJIS, IRS, HIPAA and other compliance needs may take the whole-wall mural down to multiple framed portraits. A focused and consistent approach also has the benefits of allowing for easier auditing, simpler documentation and more thorough implementation.
Structured Segmentation
The previously segmented security market now has options for standardizing and providing consistent security across cloud, endpoint, network and operations. Organizations that have taken this approach are seeing serious improvements, as well. A consistent, standardized approach to security is up to 50% more efficient than a siloed, multi-vendor approach. Because of this efficiency, they are also seeing a 45% decrease in the likelihood of a breach supported by an up to 80% reduction in alerts. Automation and native integrations allow for a more effective and mature security posture. Application and adhesion to security frameworks are simpler with management through fewer tools. Consistency across applications, operating systems and deployment locations (cloud versus on-premises) allows for easier auditing. Consistency allows for automation and native integrations to enable a 24x7x365 security operations center (SOC) with the support of a 9–5, Monday-to-Friday workforce.
What Does Consistency Look Like?
The ability to apply a consistent security policy for on-premises, work-from-home, cloud native and SASE-enabled workloads is something that few companies can offer. Additionally, the ability to take the intelligence gathered from moving data and apply it to the integrity of the workloads housing that data (on-premises or in the cloud) takes consistency another step further. Correlate that business, threat and IT intelligence together into a security operations platform, and you now have a consistent approach to pushing packets and maintaining workload integrity, securing data within your organization.
Consistent security controls enabled by Palo Alto Networks cloud-delivered security services.
Building upon industry-leading security technologies in conjunction with strong technology partnerships, Palo Alto Networks can help you consolidate your approach to security while maintaining crucial IT business continuity. For more information, visit our state and local government website, or contact the New Jersey Palo Alto Networks Named Account Manager, Patrick Rucker prucker@paloaltonetworks.com