Cyber Defense eMagazine June 2021 Edition

Don’t Wait, Automate
How An Independent Management Plane Can Secure
Your Network from Anywhere
By Todd Rychecky, Vice President of Americas, Opengear
Whether you’re an international e-commerce company, the local corner flower shop, or anything in
between, in this perpetually connected world, your network is your business. If that network goes down,
a business’s ability to communicate and transact goes down with it. While the CEO of that international
company probably ends up on TV the next day trying to explain why the company’s numbers are off, the
rest of us mostly just feel powerless and frustrated, but a network outage affects every business in some
way. The good news is that there’s an equally simple and effective solution no matter the size of your
business or your network – the independent management plane.
The concept of an independent management plane is based on a relatively simple premise – don’t use
your network to manage your network. In the past, it was known as out-of-band management, but as
automation has continued to evolve, it has become all the more important – and all the more feasible –
to create a truly independent platform for managing remote networks – a platform that will also help you
create increased security and avoid dreaded truck rolls.
Most of the time, when we hear about some monolithic company’s network going down, it's usually some
sort of configuration error. Configuration and firmware updates typically need to be made several times
a month, and when an error occurs, it locks the device – and it can lock you out right along with it. That's
a real problem, so you have to regain access to it at all costs.
Cyber Defense eMagazine – June 2021 Edition 53
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