What are Security Management Platforms?

Purpose of Security Management Platforms

Modern enterprise networks are large, complex and contain a number of different systems and environments, such as mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices and on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure. Many organizations have deployed an array of standalone security solutions to address the unique security requirements and potential attack vectors created by these diverse systems.

Security management platforms are designed to integrate these standalone solutions into a single security system. Unified security management software provides a number of advantages to an organization:

• Simplified Network Visibility: A security management platform should provide complete visibility of an organization’s entire network infrastructure, regardless of where it is located within the enterprise network. This visibility is essential to ensuring that the network is functioning properly and identifying potential cybersecurity threats.
• Simplified Security Management: Relying on an array of individual dashboards for configuring standalone is inefficient and ineffective. With an integrated security management platform, security analysts only need to learn to use a single system and can automatically propagate security configurations across the entire network.
• Consistent Policy Enforcement: Each standalone security solution has its own way of implementing security policies, making it difficult to ensure that security policies are consistently enforced across the corporate network. A security management platform can help to ensure that policies are correctly configured across an organization’s network infrastructure without requiring manual configuration by security analysts.
• Automated Security Controls: The size of an organization’s digital attack surface and the speed of modern cyberattacks can make it difficult for analysts to respond to an ongoing attack before damage is done. Support for automation within a security management platform can address this issue by enabling automatic enforcement of security controls.

Security Management Platforms Features

Security management platforms can provide a number of benefits to an organization. However, to do so effectively, a security management platform should incorporate some key features:

• Single Console Visibility: The complexity of the average enterprise network – with many standalone devices and security solutions – makes it difficult to achieve the visibility and context required to identify and respond to cyber threats. A security management platform should aggregate all of these systems into a single console to maximize analyst effectiveness and speed incident response.
• Unified Threat Management: In addition to providing complete visibility into an organization’s network infrastructure, a security management platform should also provide unified threat management. Security analysts should be able to identify and respond to threats within a single console and take action across the entire network, enabling them to effectively address potential attacks against the organization.

• Real-Time Updates: Cybersecurity is a field that is rapidly evolving, with new threats and malware strains being created every day. A security management platform requires real-time updates to ensure that it is capable of identifying and responding to the latest threats against the organization’s cybersecurity.
• Support for Automation: The rapid pace of the cyber threat landscape and the large scale of corporate networks makes protection complex. A security management platform should make it easy for analysts to automate tasks to simplify security management and speed incident response.
• Enterprise Scalability: As companies become increasingly reliant on digital infrastructure and businesses grow, corporate networks will continue to expand. Security management platforms should have the scalability necessary to continue to effectively support these growing networks.

Selecting a Security Management Platform

As enterprise networks grow larger and more complex, analysts need solutions designed to help them keep up. Having choice in how you deploy a security management platform can help an organization’s security team scale to meet the growing security requirements of the modern enterprise.

Check Point security management can be deployed on the platform of your choice; turn-key security management appliances, open server hardware, in public and private cloud environments, and as a hosted cloud service.  Choice makes it easy for security analysts to protect the organization. All form factors include an intuitive, web-based dashboard and unified support for multiple security domains.

To learn more about Check Point’s Security Management Appliances, check out this video. You’re also welcome to contact us for more information or schedule a demonstration to see how security management can help to simplify the protection of your organization’s network against cyber threats.