Network security, best practices and guidelines.
Network security does not just end when we implement security products or processes.
A network is a like a living and breathing organism that evolves with time but sometimes breaks down
and needs maintenance.
Apart from security issues, there are many common uses that can occur, so including network connectivity
uses, power outages, network crashes and black holes in routing.
Typically a security operations center, SOC is something that is the center of security monitoring
and operations.
But at the same time, a network operations center can play a very important role in a network resilience
and optimal performance.
In this section, we will take a look at some of the key attributes of the network operations center.
A network operations center is a central entity for organizations, network monitoring and behavior.
This encompasses technology and processes essential to actively managing and responding to networking
related uses.
A typical network operations center consists of engineers and analysts monitoring the network and ensuring
smooth operation and ensuring network infrastructure uptime.
This includes but is not limited to network device, server application and endpoint monitoring, hardware
and software installation concerning network devices and network analysis and which is discovering and
assessments.
Network Operations Center often encounter complex networking uses that might need troubleshooting and
collaboration between different IT teams to investigate and resolve the issue.
To increase the overall effectiveness of a network operations center, a organizations focus on a few
areas as discussed in next subsections proper incident management.
This will include identifying an incident investigating the root cause, resolving the incident and
preventing its recurrence to avoid business disruption.
For a more evolved look at the best practices for incident management and the organization should review
and analyze their adherence for the ideal incident management framework.
This includes prioritizing incidents based on their impact accurately reflecting on the current status
and documentation of all certificates.
Implementing a streamlined process to ensure that the effective handling of incidents that's in line
with the organization's policy.
Automating elementary manual iterative tasks and escalations.
Implementing an effective communication mechanism for sharing a real time updates with the required
stakeholders.
Integrating third party applications such as ticketing systems, monitoring dashboards and knowledge
base throughout intelligence and so on to make the analysts more powered.
Establishing key performance indicators and driving continuous improvement by reporting on them.
This helps the organization continuously improve and innovative on its performance metrics and key deliverables
such as higher performance quality, lower cost to serve them and their mean to time to the result.
An incident response team should consist of a hierarchical team structure where each level is accountable
and responsible for certain activities.
As you can see here, Tier one Analysts.
Tier one Analysts acts as the first point of contact in the incident response process.
They are responsible for recording classification and first line investigation.
Tier two Analysts.
Tier two analysts act as an escalation point for Tier one also acts as a SME for deeper investigation
and creation of knowledge articles.
They are also required to escalate major incidents to Tier three.
Tier three Analysts.
Tier three analysts act as an escalation point for Tier two and is responsible for restoring an impacted
service.
They escalate or resolve the incidents at a relevant vendor or team for resolution.
They also act as a liaison between internal and vendor teams.
Incident Coordinator.
Incident Coordinator acts as the administrative authority, ensuring that the process is being followed
and the quality is maintained.
They are responsible for assigning an incident within a group, maintaining communication with the incident
manager and providing trend analysis for iterative incidents.
Incident Manager.
Incident Manager manages the entire process until normal service is restored.
They are primarily responsible for planning and coordinating activities such as monitoring resolution
and reporting.
They act as a point for major escalations, monitor the workload and SLA adherence conduct incident
reviews, provide guidance to the team and ensure continuous improvement and process excellence.
In some organisations there are other roles such as incident assignment, group manager and incident
process owner who is accountable for designing, maintaining and improving the process to ensure the
efficiency and effectiveness of the service's delivery.