Securing Today’s Complex Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Networks
The state of the network today is much more than physical devices such as routers and switches. It includes virtual network devices deployed in on-prem data centers as well as cloud-native network services instantiated across multiple cloud platforms. All these devices and services must have consistent, updated security policies to ensure they are functioning with minimal risk. Given the sustained high rate of change in the network, especially for anything in the cloud, securing the network has become an ever-increasing challenge.
Automating & Orchestrating Network Security
Orchestration for network security is now a requirement when you consider the expansion of networking from strictly on-premises now into multiple cloud platforms, the increasingly high rate of network changes, and the ability for more teams to make changes to network infrastructure. Many network teams have not adopted automation and orchestration and are left to make changes using manual processes, which can lead to the introduction of errors into the configuration of network devices and services. This represents a significant risk to any organization, which is why customers turn to orchestration.
Outcomes
Optimize Changes
Optimize the time it takes to make network security updates and changes.
Orchestrate Changes Across Any Network Domain
Synchronize security configuration changes that span multiple network domains like routers, firewalls, and cloud-based security groups.
Increased Network Stability
Pre-emptively validate that any proposed changes will not violate the defined compliance standards.
Reduce & Eliminate Exposure
Integrate IT systems and sources of truth into orchestrations to reduce error and fully document changes.
Itential Network Security Automation & Orchestration Use Cases
- Accelerate Day 0/1 Deployment of New Security Devices & Services
Orchestrate the deployment of network security devices, whether they are physical, virtual, or cloud-native to save time and ensure initial configurations are compliant.
Device Onboarding Ensure Configuration Standardization & Compliance
Easily build and update Golden Configuration templates that can be used for scheduled, automated network compliance checks to identify drift and possible risk. Leverage the same templates to preventatively validate a network change before it’s made, avoiding unnecessary risk due to configuration errors.Network Configuration & Compliance
Cloud VPC & VNet Configuration & Compliance- Streamline Day-to-Day Changes to Security Policy
Safely reduce backlog by orchestrating security infrastructure changes driven by new applications and services across data center and cloud.
Firewall Configuration & Policy Management
Cloud Firewall Configuration & Policy Management - Orchestrate Across Multi-Domain, Multi-Vendor Networks
By being controller and orchestrator agnostic, Itential mitigates the complexity of managing multiple network types and vendors by consuming and federating the systems and networks managed by those systems, abstracting the complexity from the user for simplified orchestration.
Multi-Domain Orchestration (ITSM, IPAM, etc.)
Hear From Our Customers
Blocking as a Service: How a Global Financial Services Company Leveraged Itential for Vendor-Agnostic SOAR Integration
This financial services company leveraged Itential’s integration capabilities to build a universal middle layer between their threat response systems and their network and IT systems. Now, regardless of which security system or service makes a blocking request, it kicks off the same process — a given system generates a payload, and then an Itential automation workflow takes in that payload, translates it into different formats, and kicks off a chain of automation logic to complete the request.
Customer Quote
Itential’s vendor-agnostic integration model means we’re free to use lots of different security vendors without changing our core process. All the options are there and we can choose solutions based on really the technical need, confident that it’ll always work.
Director of Network Architecture
Global Financial Services Company
Major FinTech Strengthens Network Security Posture with Standardized Configuration with Itential
A major fintech company needed to strengthen its network security posture by standardizing device configurations across its global infrastructure. They adopted Itential to automate configuration management and policy enforcement, ensuring consistency, compliance, and reduced security risks. With Itential, they eliminated manual errors, improved network reliability, and enhanced operational efficiency, enabling a more secure and scalable network.
Customer Quote
Itential let us build out workflows that account for all our requirements. Not just the config push, but things like pre-checks, post-checks, systems of record took up a lot of engineers’ time. It lets us decouple our software upgrades from a preset change window so we can ensure everything is always up to date across the network.
Director, Network & Cloud Infrastructure, Major FinTech Firm
Federal Agency Modernizes Mission-Critical Networks Through Automation & Orchestration with Itential
A federal agency needed to modernize its mission-critical networks by automating and orchestrating complex operations across multiple environments. They adopted Itential to streamline configuration management, enforce security policies, and integrate automation across their network infrastructure. With Itential, the agency reduced manual effort, improved network resilience, and accelerated service delivery, ensuring a more secure and efficient foundation for their mission-critical operations.
Customer Quote
Building remediation workflows in Itential was really easy to pick up and seeing what we’ve done with our first few use cases, I can already tell the team will be able to do a lot more as we keep building workflows.
Senior Network Engineer, Federal Agency
Fiserv Accelerates Service Delivery, Reduces Risk through Standardized Orchestration
In 2023, Fiserv’s network processed $2.03 trillion USD in transactions — meaning network reliability is absolutely essential. At the same time, accelerating the delivery of network engineering is key to supporting innovative application development. By adopting Itential to orchestrate and standardize network services across their distributed, multi-vendor network, Fiserv has been able to lower the barrier to entry for network engineers to use automation and accelerate service delivery while simultaneously reducing the risk of incidents caused by human error.
Customer Quote
Itential will make us more money by increasing our velocity to deliver infrastructure. It will save us money, because to deliver more, I won’t need any significant increase in headcount. And it keeps me off the front page by allowing me to ensure infrastructure is consistently secured everywhere.
Michael Wynston
Director of Network Architecture & Automation at Fiserv
North American Utilities Company Mitigates Regulatory Network Compliance Fines with Itential
One of the largest gas and electric utilities in North America faced the need to scale configuration management and streamline a Field Area Network refresh to maintain NERC-CIP compliance and avoid heavy fines. They partnered with Itential to accelerate change processes, integrate automation with sources of truth, and bring their network back into compliance without increasing headcount.
Customer Quote
Historically, network-related compliance requirements were difficult to manage across our large disparate network because we didn’t have a good way of backing up, auditing, and maintaining configurations. Itential’s automation capabilities give our team the guardrails we need to sleep better at night as well as the ability to do more than we ever anticipated.
Sr. Director, IT Engineering, North American Utilities Company
Bridge the NetOps & SecOps Divide through Automation & Orchestration with Itential
The Itential Platform allows security and network teams to work together seamlessly to ensure that security policies for network configurations are defined and enforced in every orchestration. Security teams can quickly create Golden Configuration templates that define configurations that adhere to compliance standards. These templates can be used for traditional CLI-based network devices and API-based network services. Any orchestration created by network or security teams can use these templates to consistently check that the network is in compliance and workflows that make changes to the network can validate the proposed changes before they are applied. This helps catch configuration errors before they are applied and helps keep the network secure.
Users can gain greater security and confidence in their network changes by leveraging the capabilities of Itential’s automation and orchestration solutions such as
Low-Code Workflow Canvas
Enable network teams and security teams to participate in network orchestrations that work together to make changes more securely.
Mitigate Config Drift with Golden Configuration Templates
Easily build and update Golden Configuration templates that can be used for scheduled, automated network compliance checks to identify drift and possible risk. Leverage the same templates to preventatively validate a network change before it’s made, avoiding unnecessary risk due to configuration errors.
Governance Over Cloud Networking Infrastructure
Enable networking teams to manage configuration and enable security teams to build compliance standards for both CLI and API based network infrastructure and ensure uniform and secure configuration of network devices and services.
No-Code Integrations with IT Systems like Source of Truth & ITSM
Orchestrations can directly integrate with sources of truth like Netbox or Infoblox to make sure data for changes is 100% correct and every step of an automated Change Request can be documented in systems like ServiceNow for full transparency and accountability.
Pre-Built Workflows for Security Use Cases
Start orchestrating security changes immediately by downloading and running Pre-Built Workflows from Itential’s growing library. Existing workflows are available that can help you to update network device configurations, firewall rules, or cloud security policies.
Learn More with Itential Content
Blogs
- How SOC Teams Can Self-Serve Hybrid Network Security Services with Itential
- How Financial Services Can Scale Compliance & Security Posture Across Distributed Network Infrastructure
- Avoid Getting Lost in Your Forest of Services With Itential’s Stateful Orchestration
- How Security, Application, & Network Teams Can Reap the Rewards of a Centralized Orchestration Platform
- From Chaos to Compliance: How a Utilities Company Adopted Itential to Modernize Configuration Management
- Why Build AND Buy Is the Model for Network Automation Success
- How Itential’s Compliance Plans Transform CLI & API Compliance within One Platform
Other Resources
- Major FinTech Strengthens Network Security Posture with Standardized Configuration with Itential
- Compliance Plans & Compliance for Ordered Lists
- S&P Global’s Multi-Cloud Network Transformation Journey With Itential & Alkira
- Network Automation & Orchestration Evaluation Guide
- Automating Firewall Policy Changes with Itential
- Automating Palo Alto Panorama Security Rule Creation with Itential
- Itential & Batfish: Closed Loop Firewall Automation Demo
- How to Audit Network Security Vulnerabilities from Cisco PSIRTs with Itential’s Automated Configuration Compliance
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