SecOps Best Practices for Enterprises

by Jordan Baker | Nov 30, 2021 | SecOps

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SecOps is the blending of security and IT operations into one combined set of workflows, tools, and methodologies. This increases the speed at which new infrastructure can be spun up without impacting the quality or security of your systems. Let’s discuss what SecOps means, how it works, and the SecOps best practices for enterprises.

What is SecOps?

SecOps is based on the DevOps philosophy, which blends software development and IT operations teams. Infrastructure configurations are abstracted as software, which is integrated, tested, and deployed using the same processes that application developers use. The SecOps methodology takes this a step further, removing barriers between the security and IT operations teams. SecOps focuses on integrating security processes into the provisioning, deployment, and management of systems and infrastructure.

Why is SecOps important?

The operations team will spin up new virtual and physical systems completely independently of security teams in a traditional IT department. Once a machine is ready to deploy, the security team will perform security checks and vulnerability testing. If there are any issues, deployment will be delayed until Ops can remediate the problem and perform security testing again. In the meantime, any business units waiting on that system—for instance, a development team trying to release new software on a tight schedule—lose valuable time. And that’s the best-case scenario.

Sometimes, in their haste to meet business demands, Ops will ignore the red flags discovered by security teams so they can still deploy infrastructure on schedule. Or, even worse, they’ll skip the security testing altogether and hope for the best. Either way, this can leave massive security vulnerabilities in business-critical, production infrastructure. For example, the Equifax breach in 2017 was caused by lax security processes, and went undetected for so long because of an expired certificate. That means this high-profile event might have been prevented if Equifax had integrated security processes into their IT operations.

SecOps brings security and operations teams together, allowing them to work simultaneously to provision infrastructure quickly and efficiently without sacrificing quality or security.

How SecOps uses DevOps principles to improve efficiency and security

SecOps enables teams to integrate security and operations processes by abstracting them as software code and introducing automation.

For Ops, that means infrastructure configurations and updates are written as software definition files that are centrally managed in a code repository. These definition files can be deployed automatically to many devices simultaneously, allowing enterprises to scale quickly and efficiently. This methodology is called infrastructure as code (IaC), and it’s a fundamental principle of DevOps, NetDevOps, and SecOps.

On the Sec side of SecOps, automatic security testing runs at multiple stages in the infrastructure provisioning process:

When the initial configuration is written: at this stage, testing is focused on bugs or mistakes in the configuration that could leave vulnerabilities open in the system.
When the configuration is integrated into the code repository: automatic testing ensures that the new code doesn’t conflict with other versions or introduce any issues to existing configurations.
The configuration will receive comprehensive functional, non-functional, and security testing in a dedicated testing environment before production.
In production: servers are continuously monitored and tested, with additional testing performed when patches are deployed, or other changes occur in the production environment.

Automatic security testing allows your teams to “shift left,” meaning issues and vulnerabilities are spotted and fixed as early in the provisioning process as possible, so you can work faster and with greater agility to meet the demands of your enterprise. This form of continuous and automatic testing is part of the CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) methodology, which is foundational to DevOps, NetDevOps, and SecOps.

When you combine IaC with CI/CD to implement SecOps in your enterprise, you’re able to spin up your infrastructure more rapidly and catch security vulnerabilities and other issues earlier in the process. Plus, since SecOps seeks to automate as many processes as possible, you can reduce the risk of human error in your infrastructure configurations and security testing.

With SecOps, you can improve your enterprise’s security posture while still increasing your productivity and efficiency.

The top SecOps best practices for enterprises

SecOps is a methodology or framework for operational security, not a technology solution you can purchase and spin up in your datacenter. If you want to implement SecOps in your enterprise, you’ll need to:

Build a collaborative culture within your organization

SecOps focuses on blending the security and IT operations teams, which means you should foster a culture of open communication and cross-functional collaboration. Mistakes should be openly discussed and resolved as a team effort, so nobody’s afraid to ask for help or point out security issues. Everybody’s role within the organization should also be clearly outlined, so nobody’s left fearing automation or redundancy. This will allow all your SecOps teams to fully embrace new tools and processes to make a smoother transition.

Provide the proper SecOps tools and training

You must empower your teams with the technology and training they need to implement SecOps processes successfully. In addition to automated testing and abstracting management processes as software, SecOps also requires other tools, such as:

Monitoring and visibility: You need to monitor, analyze, and visualize your SecOps infrastructure and applications to ensure optimal performance and security. It would be best if you partnered with a vendor-neutral solution that provides one central dashboard for observing and managing all your systems, whether they’re on-premises or in the cloud.
Incident response: An automated incident response solution can detect issues, follow predefined scripts and policies to remediate events automatically, and alert security teams and other stakeholders when human intervention is required.
Collaboration and sharing: You need a central repository with version control for your infrastructure and networking configurations. This allows your Sec and Ops teams to work with the same code simultaneously without stepping on each other’s toes.

Once you’ve chosen which tools and processes to adopt, you’ll need to train your SecOps teams on how to use them. You should also ensure your staff has enough time to become comfortable using these skills and technologies at speed required for CI/CD and SecOps.

Following these best practices will ensure that your SecOps initiative is based on a solid foundation that includes team trust and collaboration, comprehensive training, and the best tools and technology for every SecOps process.

Further help implementing SecOps best practices

The value of SecOps is that you can increase the speed and efficiency of your IT operations while ensuring that security is a priority at every stage of the deployment process. To effectively implement SecOps, your enterprise needs to foster a culture of collaboration, invest in the right tools for the job, and train your teams on how to handle new workflows and technologies.

ZPE Systems is here to help your enterprise implement SecOps best practices. The Nodegrid family of hardware and software solutions provides SecOps capabilities such as:

Zero-touch provisioning to automatically configure end devices from anywhere in the world
Vendor-neutral interface abstraction so you can manage all your infrastructure solutions from one centralized control panel
Support for advanced security methodologies like Zero Trust and Security Service Edge (SSE)

Need more help implementing the SecOps best practices?

To learn more about how Nodegrid can help you implement SecOps best practices for your enterprise, contact ZPE Systems today.

The Importance of NetDevOps Automation for Modern Networks

by ZPE Systems | Nov 16, 2021 | NetDevOps

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The NetDevOps methodology is all about removing barriers and encouraging open collaboration between network, development, and operations teams. NetDevOps automation is what enables this collaboration to happen in real-time.

Let’s look at the key areas where automated NetDevOps practices can benefit your enterprise through software-defined networking, network function virtualization, software-defined wide area networking, and datacenter infrastructure management automation.

What is NetDevOps automation?

Network automation for NetDevOps focuses on eliminating manual device configurations and simplifying your infrastructure through virtualization and consolidation. Four key areas for NetDevOps automation are:

Software-defined networking, or SDN, uses software-based controllers to direct network traffic on virtual or hardware infrastructure.
Network function virtualization, or NFV, replaces physical networking appliances with virtual machines controlled by a hypervisor or SDN controller.
Software-defined wide area networking, or SD-WAN, separates traffic management and monitoring functions from the underlying hardware and makes them available as software.
Datacenter infrastructure management, or DCIM, unifies the management of all your remote and datacenter appliances under one control panel.

This article focuses on the network automation side of NetDevOps, but automating the Dev and Ops portion is also essential.

DevOps automation

On the development side, test automation and CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) focus on constantly checking new code for bugs and security vulnerabilities to streamline the deployment process.

On the operations side, automation seeks to eliminate manual configuration and provisioning of development, testing, and production systems using IaC (infrastructure as code). Using IaC, server configurations are written as software code that can run through the CI/CD automated testing process to ensure conformity and reduce human error.

The importance of NetDevOps automation for modern networks

Now, let’s dive a little deeper into NetDevOps automation for network teams.

Software-defined networking for NetDevOps

Software-defined networking (SDN) takes the control plane for physical and virtual network devices and makes it available as centrally-managed software. This allows you to create or change configurations for all your devices from one place, and then automatically deploy or roll-back those configurations at the press of a button. Your network appliance configurations can also run through the CI/CD process, just like software code and IaC, so you can perform automated testing to ensure that there are no errors or security vulnerabilities. This automated, software-based approach to network management provides numerous benefits, including:

Increased team efficiency: SDN saves time and reduces human error, which improves the
overall efficiency of your NetDevOps teams. Using SDN, your network engineers can create one software-based configuration file and deploy it many times, rather than manually entering CLI commands on every new device. This saves time, freeing your teams up to work on more business-critical tasks. Plus, with SDN you know every device receives the same configuration every time, which minimizes the risk of human error and makes it easier to pinpoint any errors that do show up.
Improved routing intelligence: SDN provides centralized management and a holistic view of your entire network, which empowers you to improve your routing intelligence and optimize your network traffic. You can use SDN’s centralized control panel to create pre-defined load balancing, performance, and bandwidth policies, then use those policies to intelligently and automatically route traffic on your network. For instance, if there’s a traffic spike at one datacenter, your load balancing policies can automatically re-route certain traffic (say, remote or branch office traffic) to an alternate site that can handle those requests.
Enhanced security capabilities: SDN supports and simplifies network micro-segmentation enabling you to implement advanced security methodologies such as zero trust security. Without SDN, creating new micro-segments is often a manual process involving tedious tasks like mapping network dependencies or configuring and deploying new appliances. Since SDN provides a central control panel with software-defined configurations that can be automatically deployed at will, micro-segmentation for zero trust security is much easier, allowing you to get more granular and specific with your policies and security controls.

You should consider software-defined networking for NetDevOps automation if your organization is looking for a more efficient networking team, a more optimized network, and an easier way to implement zero trust security.

Network function virtualization for NetDevOps

Network function virtualization (NFV) is simply the virtualization of networking appliances like routers and switches. NFV separates the communication services—e.g., load balancing, routing, firewall security—from the physical hardware they usually live on, and instead makes them available as software. You can then program and control all your virtual networking devices from a central hypervisor or an SDN controller, providing the opportunity for network automation and orchestration.

NFV enhances the capabilities and benefits of SDN by further abstracting the control functions of your network and removing even more physical devices from your infrastructure. Since NFV runs on virtual machines rather than hardware appliances, you can reduce and consolidate your network infrastructure, making it easier to manage. Fewer appliances also means you spend less money on hardware and colocation costs. Plus, scaling virtual infrastructure with NFV is faster and cheaper than physical infrastructure because you can spin up virtual machines and applications with the click of a button and automatically apply configurations via SDN.

You should think about NFV for your NetDevOps automation if you’re hoping to consolidate and simplify your network infrastructure, reduce datacenter costs, and enable fast and easy network scaling.

Software-defined wide area networking for NetDevOps

Software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) separates the traffic management and monitoring functions from your WAN hardware so you can apply intelligent routing to your remote and branch office traffic. SD-WAN looks at your WAN traffic to determine where it’s headed, and then chooses the most efficient route to that destination based on current network conditions and availability.

SD-WAN makes it easier to orchestrate and control your WAN architecture because it decouples management from the physical software, allowing you to do everything with software.SD-WAN also provides easy scalability by allowing you to automatically deploy new branch office configurations, quickly add new cloud services, and dynamically optimize routing paths to incorporate new resources and locations.

If you’re looking for an easier and more efficient way to manage and optimize your WAN traffic, then you could benefit from SD-WAN for NetDevOps automation.

Datacenter infrastructure management for NetDevOps

Datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) software provides centralized management and control over datacenter resources. You can use DCIM to gain visibility on all your physical and digital assets, no matter where they’re located, from behind one pane of glass. DCIM automation focuses on discovering and tracking assets (both physical and in the cloud), monitoring and optimizing resources, and provisioning and configuring new devices.

For example, zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) allows you to deploy remote devices without needing an engineer to stage configurations or manually install the hardware. ZTP devices use DHCP or TFTP to communicate with a server that provides configuration files or images that the device downloads and runs automatically. That means you can ship a new switch to a remote datacenter and have a local employee plug the device in and connect it to the network. From there, ZTP handles all the steps that are usually performed on-site by a network engineer.

DCIM automation with ZTP allows you to scale up your datacenter operations quickly and easily deploy new infrastructure. Your engineers can spend less time staging networking appliances or traveling to remote datacenters, allowing you to allocate your resources to more important projects. DCIM automation also provides a central control panel that you can use to manage all your datacenter infrastructure from anywhere in the world.

If you’re interested in bringing NetDevOps automation to your remote datacenter management, then you should look for DCIM solutions that support automation and zero-touch provisioning.

Kickstart NetDevOps automation on your network with Nodegrid

NetDevOps automation provides many opportunities to simplify and optimize your network management using software-defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV), software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), and datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) with zero-touch provisioning (ZTP).

Are you looking for a way to kickstart NetDevOps automation on your enterprise network? The Nodegrid family of datacenter management solutions can help. For example, serial console servers running the Nodegrid OS can automatically discover and analyze new datacenter devices, allowing for greater efficiency and scalability. Plus, Nodegrid’s vendor-neutral network management software helps you control and orchestrate your entire architecture from behind one pane of glass.

Learn more about how Nodegrid can kickstart NetDevOps automation on your network.

Contact ZPE Systems today!

HEAnet: providing network uptime for education

by Jordan Baker | Nov 15, 2021 | Case Studies, Failover Connectivity, Increase Productivity, Out of Band Management, Pillar 2 - Critical Remote, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

If there’s one sector that relies on network uptime more than ever before, it’s the education sector. For both in-person and virtual learning, students and staff connect to crucial resources around the world to share information. The infrastructure that enables this connectivity is critical, and in the country of Ireland, this infrastructure is deployed and maintained by HEAnet.

As the national education and research network, HEAnet is a provider who must adhere to stringent service levels in order to keep entire education communities online. But they recently faced a few major challenges as their out-of-band (OOB) management solution neared its end-of-life (EOL) date. This system was crucial to maintaining network uptime, as it gave engineers remote access to their 50+ nationwide locations. They needed to quickly roll out a new solution, but they were faced with a second challenge — limited staff.

It seemed HEAnet was stuck between a rock and a hard place. They would surely need to outsource the job, and that’s when they turned to Rahi, the world-renowned MSP who introduced them to ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid.

The rest is history, and for a deep dive into that lesson, download the full HEAnet case study below.

But before you do, here’s a quick refresher on critical infrastructure and why network uptime can be difficult to maintain.

Critical infrastructure and network uptime

Critical infrastructure is made up of the systems that connect sites to each other and to the rest of the world. The data center is an obvious example of where critical infrastructure is deployed. Points-of-presence (POPs) and colocations are other somewhat obvious examples. All of these house components, such as servers, switches, and routers, which are essential to handling data and traffic that organizations rely on.

Here are more examples of where critical infrastructure is commonly found:

Warehouses: servers, routers, and Wi-Fi access points help humans and their automated counterparts track inventories, fulfill orders, and communicate with vendors.
Manufacturing plants: operationalized technology like sensors and IoT devices collect data from gauges, robots, and machining equipment to ensure accurate measurements, maintain quality control, and streamline fabrication processes.
Cellular base stations: compute, storage, and failover devices process signals, store data, and provide backup connectivity for critical cell site components.

Organizations must maintain high levels of network uptime for their critical infrastructure, since it supports the lifeblood of everything they do. But this can be a challenge because these components are not always located within convenient reach of skilled engineers.

Why can network uptime be so challenging to maintain?

Maintaining network uptime can be challenging even for fully-staffed locations. This difficulty is amplified — quite dramatically — when organizations have to recover and maintain sites that are located far off the beaten path.

Imagine this: you’re responsible for monitoring and troubleshooting critical infrastructure for a network of college campuses in your region. One of your most remote sites, which serves more than one thousand students and faculty on any given day, experiences sudden disruptions and eventually goes offline. It’ll take close to four hours for you to put skilled staff on site to recover the network, which puts you at risk of breaching your SLA. You and your team are stressed out and scrambling, while students and teachers have no option but to cancel some or all of their activities.

Now imagine that you have a tool that allows you to respond instantly and restore the network before anyone even notices. That’s the kind of power you can achieve with a deep, robust out-of-band management solution, which is one of the tools HEAnet deployed to keep disruptions from reaching users.

There’s more that can go wrong, however. Your sites could suffer an ISP outage, leaving locations in the dark if they don’t employ any wireless backup connections. Or if your customer has a multi-vendor MSP solution that you’re part of, the other vendor’s components may be to blame, and you need a tool that can help you quickly diagnose the root cause.

Download the HEAnet case study

To see more challenges you might face when maintaining network uptime, download the HEAnet case study. You’ll also discover how Nodegrid gave them seamless backup connectivity and allowed a single Rahi engineer to deploy two sites in a single day. Get the case study now.

NetDevOps Transformation Process & Critical Steps for Network Professionals

by Jordan Baker | Nov 3, 2021 | Increase Productivity, NetDevOps Transformation

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The NetDevOps methodology helps organizations streamline their network, development, and IT operations through automation and cross-team collaboration. This blog will explain the NetDevOps transformation process and the critical steps you need to take to implement NetDevOps in your organization. First, let’s define NetDevOps.

What Is NetDevOps?

NetDevOps is the practice of applying DevOps principles to the network team. DevOps focuses on reducing the barriers between development and IT operations teams by encouraging greater collaboration and automation. It does this using various tools and methodologies, but of particular relevance are Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD).

On the operations side, IaC automates the provisioning, configuration, and management of your data center infrastructure. This improves the speed at which systems can be added and updated, and reduces the amount of human error involved in system configuration. With IaC, you write infrastructure configurations as machine-readable code or definition files that describe the desired state of the machine. The code is managed like any other software development project, in a central repository with versioning control, and can be tested, deployed, and integrated automatically.
On the development side, continuous integration (CI) allows developers to frequently merge revisions and updates to code in the codebase or central repository. Automated tests run every time new code is checked in to ensure no bugs or security vulnerabilities are integrated into your build. This allows development and QA teams to find and fix problems early in the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
Continuous delivery (CD) automatically deploys the new code into a test environment for further functional and non-functional testing, including load and integration testing. The code is then prepared for production.
Continuous deployment is essentially the same as continuous delivery, and some people use the two terms interchangeably. However, continuous deployment refers to the automated deployment to the production environment.

When we apply these principles to the network operations side of an IT environment, combined with a culture shift that emphasizes cross-team collaboration, we get the NetDevOps methodology.

NetDevOps transformation process and critical steps for network professionals

To achieve NetDevOps transformation in the enterprise, you’ll need to implement software-defined networking, which will allow you to apply CI/CD processes and streamline deployments. You will also need to shift the culture in your organization to prioritize eliminating the barriers between your cross-functional IT teams.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) for NetDevOps

Software-defined networking (SDN) is essentially just IaC for networking devices like routers, switches, and firewalls. With SDN, you can write machine-readable definition files to define the desired state of your device. The device will then install, update, or roll back its configuration based on the information in that definition file.

For example, imagine you have ten remote branch offices, each of them with two wireless access points (WAPs) that are the same make and model. Using SDN, you can easily deploy a third WAP to each location and automatically deploy a definition file that applies the current configuration, OS update version, and firmware version to those new devices at the click of a button. This saves your network engineers from having to spend their valuable time staging devices or traveling to deploy them in person. In addition, manually configuring devices and running CLI commands increases the risk of human error, so SDN can save you from costly mistakes by automating your network configurations.

Since the IT operations and networking teams have a lot of overlap in terms of knowledge and tools, it’s easy to see how IaC can apply to NetDevOps. But how does the software development methodology of CI/CD apply to networking?

Implementing CI/CD processes for NetDevOps configurations

SDN works by treating network device configurations as software code, allowing you to implement CI/CD processes for network configurations. To help you understand how that works, let’s examine the CI/CD pipeline from a network management perspective.

CI involves continuously integrating new code into the existing software repository by automatically merging changes and running tests. For NetDevOps transformation, SDN code is checked into a central repository. CI automatically applies version control and change management to ensure nobody accidentally breaks or writes over someone else’s code. In addition, automated unit tests run on the code to check for bugs.
Next, the CD will deliver the new SDN configuration to a testing environment, typically with virtualized devices on a private network. In this environment, you can perform automated testing. For example, load testing will check for performance issues, and security testing will ensure the definition file won’t introduce any vulnerabilities to your production network.
Finally, continuous deployment will automatically deploy your configured device to the production network. Since the SDN definition file was thoroughly tested in both the CI and CD stages, the device can go live on your network with minimal impact on end-users and business operations.

Now you understand the technological processes and tools that enable NetDevOps transformation. However, one of the most challenging aspects of any major organizational shift is getting all your people on board with the changes.

Encouraging an organizational shift towards NetDevOps culture

What do we mean when we say NetDevOps culture? The foundational principle of NetDevOps (and any other DevOps derivative) is breaking down barriers and informational silos between teams and encouraging collaboration and integration. This is done partially with software tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams that enable cross-team communication and collaboration—but it’s mostly a mindset.

People are resistant to change, mainly when it affects their work. Before your enterprise can fully adopt NetDevOps, you need a plan for communicating functional changes to your people and training them on how to adapt their workflows. For example, network engineers aren’t always comfortable writing code, so they may need some time to learn SDN and practice their new skills before you rush ahead with implementation. Your engineers will also need to learn how to use your specific SDN and network automation tools.

In addition, you need to foster a culture of open communication, especially involving mistakes. As everyone learns new systems and processes, someone will inevitably make mistakes or forget a new workflow. This can be incredibly stressful when your people are also dealing with a new organizational model in which the lines between departments are blurred, and there may be multiple managers involved in any task. That’s why it’s critical to develop a business culture that doesn’t punish mistakes or questions and instead encourages everyone to work together to solve problems. This culture shift will enable a smoother NetDevOps transformation for your enterprise.

Empower your NetDevOps transformation with Nodegrid

NetDevOps transformation requires fostering a culture of open collaboration and communication within your IT teams, which helps you automate your network device configurations using SDN and CI/CD for faster and more accurate deployments. Automation shouldn’t stop there, though—you should employ network automation for as many management tasks as possible to further streamline your operations.

For instance, you could use the Nodegrid network management solution to consolidate your data center infrastructure management behind one pane of glass. The Nodegrid family of hardware and software features zero-touch provisioning, which automatically discovers and adds new devices to your NetDevOps environment. Plus, Nodegrid is completely vendor-neutral, so you can easily integrate it with your SDN and CI/CD tools.

Want more information about how Nodegrid can empower your NetDevOps transformation?

Contact ZPE Systems online or call 1-844-4ZPE-SYS.

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