Network Security Software - Key Features & Capabilities
Network security can place immense demands on the people and processes that keep an organization safe. A lack of decent tools can leave analysts and managers scrambling to manually battle the ensuing backlog. This guide to network security tools highlights the core principles of network protection, and identifies how a range of different software options can support each.
The Key Features of Network Security Software - And Which Tools Deliver Them
At the heart of network security lie three fundamental outcomes: protection, detection, and response.
- Protection involves the deployment of tools and policies that proactively block unauthorized access and prevent intrusions.
- Detection focuses on monitoring and analyzing network activity to identify potential threats before they deploy or escalate.
- Response ensures that when threats are confirmed, the organization can act swiftly to contain and remediate the issue.
Network security demands that an organization is well-suited to realize each of these three outcomes. To achieve them, network security must be broken down into its key features. While hypothetical goals are useful as North Star focal points, it’s also critical that team members understand precisely how they’re getting there.
To achieve that, we will break the components of network security down into three primary areas – access, data, and application security – and highlight the specific tools that organizations use to deliver protection, detection, and response.
액세스 제어
Access control plays a foundational role in network security by ensuring that only authorized users and compliant devices can connect to a network.
네트워크 액세스 제어
Network access control, or NAC, allows organizations to enforce authentication and authorization policies at the point of entry, blocking unauthorized devices before they can interact with internal resources. Access control lists can be thought of as a collection of employee access cards – employees are identified by their access credentials.
Beyond initial access, NAC supports detection by providing continuous visibility into who and what is on the network, maintaining an up-to-date inventory of:
- 사용자
- 엔드포인트
- Their access privileges
This ongoing monitoring helps identify unauthorized or rogue devices, and therefore allows security teams to respond through swift access adjustments. While NAC is the traditional approach, role-based access control (RBAC) is more popular within large and multifaceted organizations.
Rather than any credential allowing access to the full breadth of an organization’s networks, RBAC issues access to network resources according to the user’s specific job role – allowing organizations to issue the minimum viable authorization across large quantities of users.
To implement this, some organizations choose a generic infrastructure like a corporate Virtual Private Server (VPN), set up to provide remote employees with access to only their required resources.
Others pair this with more purpose-built network security tools, such as a firewall.
Network Firewall
Firewall software is an established security tool that can provide and delegate network access to its users, but unlike NAC, network firewalls offer a greater amount of customization and access logic.
Since network access security needs to identify attackers, firewalls’ extra components allow a closer look at each user’s legitimacy. This information includes:
- The user’s identity
- 디바이스 유형
- Compliance status
Next-Generation Firewalls take an even more advanced approach to scrutinizing users.
They often provide built-in sandboxing to better identify malware-loaded requests, and incorporate a greater degree of automated responses.
Whether traditional or next-gen, firewalls sit at the perimeter of a network; whenever a user or device requests access, it compares both the user and their surrounding network details against the firewall’s internal access control lists. Vital to a firewall are their policies.
These are inbuilt rules that dictate how the firewall responds to each inbound or outbound request.
Since these policies are customizable, they allow each enterprise security team to build its own network access profile.
Data Control
While users represent a vital component of network security, it’s also critical to maintain clear visibility into where data resides and how it moves throughout the organization’s infrastructure. Mirroring the dual focus on identification and protection, effective data control at the network level typically relies on two core solutions working in tandem:
- 보안 정보 및 이벤트 관리 (보안 정보 및 이벤트 관리(SIEM))
- Data Loss Prevention (DLP).
보안 정보 및 이벤트 관리 (보안 정보 및 이벤트 관리(SIEM))
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) is the first of these: this system offers visibility into data flows by aggregating and analyzing logs and events from a wide range of sources – anything from firewalls and VPN servers to more granular data points like routers, servers, applications, and endpoints.
By centralizing this data, SIEM provides a view of network activity, including how data moves between:
- 디바이스
- 사용자
- Systems
By correlating events, it’s then possible to add a further layer of protection in the form of behavioral analysis, which detects unusual patterns in how data is being transferred. This predictive insight grants visibility into where data is flowing, who’s accessing it, and whether that movement aligns.
데이터 유출 방지 (DLP)
This contextual awareness can be taken one step further by Data Loss Prevention (DLP). DLP solutions are designed to protect data across three key states: in motion, at rest, and in use.
For data in motion – such as emails, file transfers, and other communications – DLP tools inspect the network traffic to detect unauthorized sharing. When securing data at rest, DLP systems scan storage repositories like file servers and databases.
They’re highlighting if they’re not covered by other network security measures like a firewall.
애플리케이션 보안
Applications are a key part of today’s workflows: they’re how swathes of users interact with an organization’s underlying networks. But, traditional firewalls and antivirus solutions aren’t equipped to analyze application-level traffic.
To keep third-party and SaaS apps secure, organizations can deploy Web Application Firewalls (WAFs).
WAF
WAFs monitor the HTTP/S traffic to and from a web application to protect against common attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and file inclusion. Like the previously mentioned firewall, it sits between the end-user and the application’s servers.
From here, it inspects incoming requests and outgoing responses based on a set of predefined or adaptive rules. Modern WAFs are able to detect the API schemas that each data flow relies on, and identify when an API is being manipulated during an attack.
침입 방지 시스템(IPS)
Other than WAFs, intrusion prevention systems (IPS) can also provide a degree of network-level security.
They differ in their focal points, however, since WAFs primarily focus on inbound or outbound access;
- IPS, on the other hand, takes the same framework of automated response and applies it to internal network activity.
- Most IPS works by randomly sampling network traffic, and then comparing it against baseline samples
- If it deviates too far, the IPS triggers an action in response.
If this data does indicate that an unauthorized attacker has gained network access, the IPS highlights the suspicious activity, noting their IP address, and begins to launch an automated response.
Why Defense-in-Depth Demands Multiple Approaches
No single tool can address all threats across a modern network: this is the central premise of defense-in-depth, which relies on layered security for multiple avenues of visibility and protection.
For instance, while a firewall may block unauthorized access at the perimeter, it cannot detect lateral movement within the network.
Similarly, intrusion detection systems (IDS) can alert on suspicious behavior, but without centralized logging and SIEM integration, correlating events across the entirety of an environment places heavy strain on an organization’s human response team.
Even advanced threats like ransomware often bypass perimeter defenses through phishing.
By combining security tools – such as network firewalls and endpoint protection – you create overlapping layers that increase detection capability and improve response resilience
How to Foster Integrated Network Security
Large enterprises are increasingly challenged by the need for networks that are open, scalable, and dynamic to support modern IT and business operations. But, this flexibility has introduced significant cybersecurity risks, exposing the limitations of traditional, static security controls.
To address this, organizations’ security models need to seamlessly span the edge, core, and cloud. This is the core goal of an integrated network security architecture.
To achieve true integration, a threat-focused network security architecture must be built on three foundational principles.
- First, it requires centralized command and control, enabling unified policy management and visibility across the entire network environment.
- Second, it must support distributed enforcement, allowing security controls to be applied consistently at every point – whether at the edge, in the core, or across cloud environments.
- Finally, it depends on integrated, actionable intelligence, which must be laterally shared between all relevant
Establish Centralized Command
Management and operations represent one of the greatest time-sinks in modern network security.
Expecting analysts to jump between segmented tools incurs harsh time losses and introduces efficiency losses. The first step toward integrated network security is centralizing security tools.
This sees all security data filtered through an intuitive user interface and a robust workflow engine that integrates with broader IT and security operations tools. This centralized approach must allow security teams to provision, configure, and modify key controls, such as firewall rules, VLANs, and router or switch ACLs – from a single interface.
By consolidating these tasks into one platform, organizations can significantly simplify their security operations, reduce configuration errors, and improve overall protection.
This consolidation shouldn’t stop at the tool layer: historic network and endpoint security teams once operated in silos, relying on separate:
- Teams
- 도구
- Processes
However, this fragmented approach is no longer effective.
A modern network security architecture must tightly integrate both network and endpoint security controls – it’s only then that prevention and detection can work cohesively across all environments.
Set Up a Distributed Deployment
Centralized command and control allows CISOs to define global security policies, but effective protection still depends on those policies being enforced by the security services deployed across the network. Distributed deployment is key since it ensures that protection is applied precisely.
To achieve this, security services must be available in any form – physical or virtual – and at any location.
- Data centers
- Remote sites
- Cloud platforms
For instance, retail environments can deploy a mix of firewalls,
IDS/IPS, and malware detection tools to strictly control point-of-sale system communications, while remote employees can be governed by different access rules than those on the corporate LAN.
Also, a robust architecture must support a full range of security functions, capable of inspecting and filtering traffic for a variety of threats, including:
Combining varied form factors with a suite of services enables layered, adaptive defenses that scale with organizational needs and threat evolution.
This demand far outweighs the capabilities of traditional hardware firewalls.
To achieve this, cloud-based and hybrid security tools are important. As these can be deployed anywhere within the network, it’s possible to achieve real-time communication between all security components. This then allows for dynamic policy adjustment, threat detection, and rapid incident response.
Implement Actionable intelligence
Modern network security architecture must integrate cloud-based threat intelligence – it’s one of the few ways to stay ahead of evolving threats.
By integrating pre-established security tools with real-time attack intel, they can better track:
- Emerging software vulnerabilities
- Command-and-control infrastructure
- Harmful files
- Fresh indicators of compromise (IoCs)
Integrate All Security Data Points with Check Point Network Security
Check Point Quantum offers a powerful, all-in-one security solution that combines high-performance threat prevention with industry-leading resilience and scalability. Designed for modern enterprise needs, Quantum security gateways and firewalls go beyond basic protection, delivering advanced features like:
- 정책 관리
- SD-WAN support
- IoT 보안
- 원격 액세스 VPN
(in a single, unified platform.)
Quantum delivers effortless network security, scaling up to 1 TBPS of threat prevention using intelligent load-balancing firewall clusters.
At the heart of it all is a smart, centralized console that simplifies access control across networks, clouds, and IoT environments, streamlining operations and cutting security management costs.
