Cyber Defense eMagazine November Edition for 2021

to remote work and virtualization are partly to blame for the rise in costlier and more common network
outages, the primary culprit for network downtime is that networks are becoming more layered, and as a
result, more vulnerable. Software stacks must be updated more regularly, creating more opportunities for
cyber-criminals to compromise systems. Moreover, with bad actors and external bots constantly probing
corporate networks for weaknesses, there was a recent rise in unassuming employees falling victim to
phishing attacks resulting in breaches and downtime.
Customers today expect uninterrupted network experiences, and because everything from leisure to
work-related activities is dependent on a stable network connection, it is not an unreasonable
expectation. The health of networks directly correlates to the health of businesses. Increasingly,
organizations consider network resilience to be a necessity rather than an insurance policy. Security is a
critical aspect of network resilience, or the ability to keep a network running during issues, ensuring
business continuity. Whether at the core or on the edge of infrastructure, network resilience prevents
disruptions to the customer experience from cyber-attacks.
The True Cost of a Poor Security Posture
Network engineers are leveraging NetOps because they know the true cost of a network outage is much
more than the loss of revenue. According to the same survey of the 500 senior IT decision-makers, the
three greatest impacts network outages have on their organizations included clear drops in customer
satisfaction (41%), data loss (34%) and financial loss (31%). Additionally, 39% of companies revealed
that it took more than a full day to restore network functions after an outage. Likewise, in 2020 alone,
31% of companies lost at least one million USD due to downtime. Downtime consequences are so severe
that they could lead to an untimely disaster for a business.
Unsurprisingly, due to the heightened risk of outages and increases in cyber-attacks, 83% of network
engineers put network resilience as their number one priority. And because network outages from cyberattacks
are a matter of when and not if – businesses can deploy NetOps to minimize the most damaging
effects.
NetOps and Network Management
Network engineers use NetOps for its various benefits, from the standard day-to-day processes of
keeping the network running to providing an alternative route to remediate the network when it goes
down. Increasingly, NetOps is used to build and maintain a network that is automated, agile and available.
Having this type of network is vital to protecting the production network from accidental misconfiguration
or, more importantly, cyberattacks. Furthermore, all network configuration and management should be
restricted to the core network operations team through an independent management plane, including an
out-of-band network; this has led to the management plane being referred to as the network for network
engineers.
Those organizations who use an independent secure management plane separate from the production
network, such as an out-of-band network, noticed significant improvements to their security. Similarly,
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