Network Outages: How to Improve Visibility and Recovery
How enterprises must elevate their security best practices to better manage network outages.
When it comes to cyberattacks, an organization’s mindset shouldn’t be if, but when. Due to these growing threats, businesses have added multiple layers of defense to keep end-to-end attacks at bay – many of the cyberattacks over the past decade that have specifically pinpointed weakness in network systems have since gotten addressed. However, cybercriminals are incredibly persistent. Stephanie Norcinil, content marketing manager at Opengear, notes that their approaches have evolved and now use complex, multistage techniques that combine several methods in a single attack.
For example, malware, phishing and social engineering attacks continue to grow in sophistication and prevalence. Thanks to the internet, hacking software has become more ubiquitous. Businesses can try to prevent attacks by purchasing cybersecurity solutions. However, criminals also have the ability to access these and have quickly learned to bypass weak points.
With More Complexity Comes More Security Risks
In fact, 2022 marked a breakout year for ransomware – the cybersecurity attack vector wreaked havoc on individuals and organizations globally. The first half of 2022 saw an estimated 236.1 million ransomware attacks, with ransomware accounting for around 20% of all cybercrimes in 2022.
All it takes is one employee opening an email to compromise an entire enterprise. DDoS attacks have also massively increased in frequency, with the fourth quarter of 2022 having 3.5 times more attacks per day compared to the end of 2021. Overall, DDoS attacks rose an alarming 150% in 2022. This significant uptick in attacks is most likely a result of businesses switching to remote and hybrid work models, among other factors like the ever-increasing complexity of systems.
These cybercriminals are after sensitive, valuable information stored on database files, word documents and images, but an often-overlooked byproduct of these attacks is network downtime. Networking is closely tied to cybersecurity, as cyberattacks are one of the main ways that outages can occur.
According to a recent global report that polled 500 network engineers and CIOS, the mean time to recovery (MTTR), or the average time it takes to find and resolve a disruption, was around 11 hours. This finding was almost two hours longer than in 2020. At the same time, network disruptions are becoming more frequent and more expensive, causing a loss in productivity, decreased customer satisfaction, higher employee turnover and brand reputational damage. It’s no wonder that the same research revealed that network engineers rank ‘security’ and ‘avoiding downtime’ as the most significant networking challenges post-digital transformation.
The Importance of Recovery
Despite the importance of investing in more robust defenses, organizations are typically so concerned about preventing and containing attacks that they forget to deploy solutions that can quickly bring their network back up when one occurs. Beyond encryption and other security strategies, businesses must create a resilient network, advanced enough to survive cyberattacks while preventing operations from being impacted – as much as possible. Future-forward thinking companies understand that these two concepts – security and network-focused digital transformation – are not mutually exclusive but one and the same. Those enterprises that fail to place their networks at the core of digital transformation initiatives are at risk of more cybersecurity issues.
Organizations must also understand the difference between resilient and redundant networks. Redundancy is part of the resilience solution but is not the only consideration. Specifically at the edge, where, according to IDC, more than 50% of new enterprise IT infrastructure will be deployed, building redundancy is not cost-effective. And with no technical staff on-site, the ability to monitor, manage and remediate devices remotely is a significant addition to a resilient solution. A truly resilient system takes into account an entire ecosystem, while a redundant one simply removes a single point of failure.
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In the same vein, to build a resilient network that can recover rapidly from outages, engineers need to separate and containerize the functions of the management plane through an out-of-band network. An out-of-band network creates an independent management plane, operating freely from the primary in-band network. This allows engineers to remotely have secure, reliable access to their connected resources on the First Day, Worst Day and Every Day.
The power to identify and remediate network issues caused by cyberattacks from anywhere is invaluable, saving businesses the hassle of rolling trucks, which can take hours or days.
It’s crucial that companies have the capability to recover quickly from a cyberattack-induced outage, and part of being able to do this is having visibility of their entire environment. One management software from a global network technology organization is an excellent example of a solution that can help an enterprise quickly reestablish its network after an outage and supply visibility to devices. Delivering simplified deployment, streamlined management, and expedited access, network professionals can manage their out-of-band network effortlessly while enabling critical access to their connected resources. Manual methods are time-consuming and can result in data integrity and efficiency issues. This software enables centralized provisioning, delivers a source of truth, and brings scale.
Independent of the management plane, it provides a unified display to deploy, manage, and remediate appliances and other physical and virtual connected resources. By providing presence and proximity, engineers can control every aspect of their network.
When a breach does occur to a system, which is inevitable, engineers have the ability to isolate the incident by shutting down server access and disabling impacted network equipment, protecting private data until the incident gets remediated. Additionally, network engineers can remotely disconnect the WAN connection, isolating an affected branch. However, if the engineers are unable to regain control of network assets, they can power off via remote PDU control and reconfigure devices to factory default and rebuild from the console port.
Building Resilient Infrastructure
Having purpose-built network solutions – like the ones mentioned above – helps companies recover quickly from outages and provide full visibility during an attack. However, they aren’t substitutes for cybersecurity. Nevertheless, these features are still critical to troubleshooting and remediating issues, a costly result of cyberattacks. In light of these ever-evolving attacks, businesses have to realize that every device in their network is a potential target – and the ones at the edge are most vulnerable. This means security and resilience must be part of every aspect of an organization’s network infrastructure.
The network is fundamental to an enterprise’s digital transformation strategy, especially for mobility, IoT, analytics and cloud solutions. Its ability to bounce back from a disruption shouldn’t be secondary to cyberattack prevention. Ultimately, ensuring always-on access through an out-of-band network and visibility to disrupted and dispersed systems will protect one’s efficiency, productivity and reputation during these times of heightened cybercriminal activity and well into the future.
How are you upgrading your network security to deal with cyberattacks? Share with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
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