Network Segmentation Best Practices
To implement and maintain effective network segmentation, here are five network segmentation best practices to live by:
1. Don’t Over-Segment
Over-segmenting can decrease your overall network visibility and make management difficult, but under-segmenting keeps your attack surface broad and hurts your security posture.
2. Perform Regular Audits
Network segmentation will only improve your network security if you continually audit your segments for vulnerabilities, tight permissions, and updates. If you know there are no exploitable gaps in your coverage, you’ll be one step ahead of hackers.
3. Follow the Principle of Least Privilege
By applying the principle of least privilege across all your segments, you guarantee your users, network administrators, and security team that access is only granted when necessary. Least-privileged access is fundamental for zero trust network access.
4. Limit Third-Party Access
Granting third parties access is already risky, so it’s important to do so only where it’s needed, especially if you’re granting it to multiple segments. Carefully considering new permissions is key to maintaining good network security posture.
5. Automate Where You Can
Besides the benefits of automation in general (such as improved visibility, security, and MTTR), automating network segmentation allows you to quickly identify and classify new assets and data, which is another segmentation best practice in itself.