Tufin survey reveals end-to-end Orchestration of Network Security Policy is "Essential for Business Agility".

UK and US businesses report increased complexity and trends like Cloud and virtualization require a more automated IT network; one third acknowledge frequent firewall outages and human error

Tufin Technologies, the leading provider of Security Policy Orchestration, today announced the results of a recent survey exploring the changing face of network security operations.  The Tufin survey reveals that C-level managers and IT professionals are tackling increasingly complex enterprise networks, with trends such as virtualization, IPv6 and the Cloud requiring more automation of network management. The Research also demonstrates an ever-changing IT network with companies from financial services, telecom, technology and public sectors facing frequent network configuration changes, and suffering from human error and recurrent firewall outages. The research was conducted by ResearchNOW, which surveyed more than 500 C-level managers and senior IT professionals from companies of 1,000 or more in the US and the UK.

Key findings of the research include:

• End-to-end, coordinated security policy is vital: almost 9 out of 10 IT and business decision-makers felt that coordination of security policy across the entire network is “essential”.
• Network management moving towards automation: 67% of senior IT and decision-makers think security policy management across the network will become more automated over the next few years. Network configuration and server configuration are the IT areas most likely to become automated.
• Changing job roles impact Policy Management: 71% had to adopt new processes, learn new technologies and interact with new people because of trends like Cloud, IPv6 and virtualization.  55% report these new business initiatives require security’s input, and almost 1/3 report they require data from new stakeholders in order to design proper security policies.
• The Cloud makes a big impact: 50% of all respondents said the Cloud will have the most impact on network security in the short term. Other key areas are network operations applications, outsourcing and virtualization.
• Virtualization: Nearly half of respondents reported more than 50% of their network was virtualized.
• IPv6 is considered a big priority: 44% believe IPv6 is either important or very important to their network.
• Increasing network complexity: 56% said that system complexity was the number one root cause undermining and jeopardizing IT security efforts.
• Firewall outages are frequent:  33% of UK and US IT and business decision-makers said that their company had suffered five or more firewall-related outages in the last year - the equivalent of nearly one every other month. 17% of financial services companies reported 11 or more outages in the last 12 months.
• Human error is common: A quarter of UK and US business have had to re-do more than 60 percent of all firewall changes because they weren’t implemented correctly the first time.

“This research shows that network security has become too complex to manually manage, especially with the introduction of new technologies such as Cloud, virtualization and IPv6,” said Reuven Harrison, co-founder and CTO, Tufin. “The key to meeting these challenges is automation and orchestration which will increase IT agility while maintaining security and compliance across the network.”

Read the full report.

These findings align with Tufin’s expanded vision and rebranded solution set, announced last week.  Version R13-3 of the Tufin Orchestration Suite™ reflects Tufin’s vision for Security Policy Orchestration, a new paradigm for automated implementation of network infrastructure changes across heterogeneous environments. Security Policy Orchestration goes beyond traditional configuration of individual firewalls. It improves operations between systems, integrates with different network security devices and enhances automation that enables network engineers to efficiently and accurately share policy data with new stakeholders.

For more on ‘Why you should care about Security Policy Orchestration’ please register for the upcoming the webinar: http://www.tufin.com/about-us/webinars/?commid=90931