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PCI DSS 4.0 Requirements

by | May 15, 2024 | Data Center Management, Improve Network Security, Increase Productivity, Micro-segmentation, Minimize Impact of Disruptions, Modernize Legacy Environments, Monitoring & Reporting, NetDevOps, Network Automation, Out of Band Management, Remote Network Management, Serial Consoles, Streamline Deployments, Vendor Neutral Platform, Zero Trust Security

Businessman,Using,Virtual,Touch,Screen,Clicks,Abbreviation:,Pci,Dss.,Concept
The Security Standards Council (SSC) of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) released the version 4.0 update of the Data Security Standard (DSS) in March 2022. PCI DSS 4.0 applies to any organization in any country that accepts, handles, stores, or transmits cardholder data. This standard defines cardholder data as any personally identifiable information (PII) associated with someone’s credit or debit card. The risks for PCI DSS 4.0 noncompliance include fines, reputational damage, and potentially lost business, so organizations must stay up to date with all recent changes.

The new requirements cover everything from protecting cardholder data to implementing user access controls, zero trust security measures, and frequent penetration (pen) testing. Each major requirement defined in the updated PCI DSS 4.0 is summarized below, with tables breaking down the specific compliance stipulations and providing tips or best practices for meeting them.

Citation: The PCI DSS v4.0

PCI DSS 4.0 requirements and best practices

Every PCI DSS 4.0 requirement starts with a stipulation that the processes and mechanisms for implementation are clearly defined and understood. The best practice involves updating policy and process documents as soon as possible after changes occur, such as when business goals or technologies evolve, and communicating changes across all relevant business units.

Jump to the other requirements below:

Build and maintain a secure network and systems

Requirement 1: Install and maintain network security controls

Network security controls include firewalls and other security solutions that inspect and control network traffic. PCI DSS 4.0 requires organizations to install and properly configure network security controls to protect payment card data.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

Network security controls (NSCs) are configured and maintained.

Validate network security configurations before deployment and use configuration management to track changes and prevent configuration drift.

Network access to and from the cardholder data environment (CDE) is restricted.

Monitor all inbound traffic to the CDE, even from trusted networks, and, when possible, use explicit “deny all” firewall rules to prevent accidental gaps.

Network connections between trusted and untrusted networks are controlled.

Implement a DMZ that manages connections between untrusted networks and public-facing resources on the trusted network.

Risks to the CDE from computing devices that can connect to both untrusted networks and the CDE are mitigated.

Use security controls like endpoint protection and firewalls to protect devices from Internet-based attacks and zero-trust and network segmentation to prevent lateral movement to CDEs.

Requirement 2: Apply secure configurations to all system components

Attackers often compromise systems using known default passwords or old, forgotten services. PCI DSS 4.0 requires organizations to properly configure system security settings and reduce the attack surface by turning off unnecessary software, services, and accounts.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

System components are configured and managed securely.

Continuously check for vendor-default user accounts and security configurations and ensure all administrative access is encrypted using strong cryptographic protocols.

Wireless environments are configured and managed securely.

Apply the same security standards consistently across wired and wireless environments, and change wireless encryption keys whenever someone leaves the organization.

Protect account data

Requirement 3: Protect stored account data

Any payment account data an organization stores must be protected by methods such as encryption and hashing. Organizations should also limit account data storage unless it’s necessary and, when possible, truncate cardholder data.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

Storage of account data is kept to a minimum.

Use data retention and disposal policies to configure an automated, programmatic procedure to locate and remove unnecessary account data.

Sensitive authentication data (SAD) is not stored after authorization.

Review data sources to ensure that the full contents of any track, card verification code, and PIN/PIN blocks are not retained after the authorization process is completed.

Access to displays of full primary account number (PAN) and ability to copy cardholder data are restricted.

Use role-based access control (RBAC) to limit PAN access to individuals with a defined need and use the masking approach to display only the number of digits needed for a specific function.

PAN is secured wherever it is stored.

Render PAN unreadable using one-way hashing with a randomly generated secret key, truncation, index tokens, and strong cryptography with secure key management.

Cryptographic keys used to protect stored account data are secured.

Manage cryptographic keys with a centralized key management system that’s PCI DSS 4.0 compliant to restrict access to key-encrypting keys and store them separately from data-encrypting keys.

Where cryptography is used to protect stored account data, key management processes and procedures covering all aspects of the key lifecycle are defined and implemented.

Use a key management solution that simplifies or automates key replacement for old or compromised keys.

Requirement 4: Protect cardholder data with strong cryptography during transmission over open, public networks

While requirement 3 applies to stored card data, requirement 4 outlines stipulations for protecting cardholder data in transit.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

PAN is protected with strong cryptography during transmission.

Encrypt PAN over both public and internal networks and apply strong cryptography at both the data level and the session level.

Maintain a vulnerability management program

Requirement 5: Protect all systems and networks from malicious software

Organizations must take steps to prevent malicious software (a.k.a., malware) from infecting the network and potentially exposing cardholder data.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

Malware is prevented, or detected and addressed.

Use a combination of network-based controls, host-based controls, and endpoint security solutions; supplement signature-based tools with AI/ML-powered detection.

Anti-malware mechanisms and processes are active, maintained, and monitored.

Update tools and signature databases as soon as possible and prevent end-users from disabling or altering anti-malware controls.

Anti-phishing mechanisms protect users against phishing attacks.

Use a combination of anti-phishing approaches, including anti-spoofing controls, link scrubbers, and server-side anti-malware.

Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and software

Development teams should follow PCI-compliant processes when writing and validating code. Additionally, install all appropriate security patches immediately to prevent malicious actors from exploiting known vulnerabilities in systems and software.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

Bespoke and custom software are developed securely.

Use manual or automatic code reviews to search for undocumented features, validate that third-party libraries are used securely, analyze insecure code structures, and check for logical vulnerabilities.

Security vulnerabilities are identified and addressed.

Use a centralized patch management solution to automatically notify teams of known vulnerabilities and pending updates.

Public-facing web applications are protected against attacks.

Use automatic vulnerability security assessment tools that include specialized web scanners that analyze web application protection.

Changes to all system components are managed securely.

Use a centralized source code version management solution to track, approve, and roll back changes.

Implement strong access control measures

Requirement 7: Restrict access to system components and cardholder data by business need-to-know

This PCI DSS 4.0 requirement aims to limit who and what has access to sensitive cardholder data and CDEs to prevent malicious actors from gaining access through a compromised, over-provisioned account. “Need to know” means that only accounts with a specific need should have access to sensitive resources; it’s often applied using the “least-privilege” approach, which means only granting accounts the specific privileges needed to perform a job role.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

Access to system components and data is appropriately defined and assigned.

Use RBAC to provide accounts with access privileges based on their job functions (e.g., ‘customer service agent’ or ‘warehouse manager’) rather than on an individual basis.

Access to system components and data is managed via an access control system.

Use a centralized identity and access management (IAM) system to manage access across the enterprise, including branches, edge computing sites, and the cloud.

Requirement 8: Identify users and authenticate access to system components

Organizations must establish and prove the identity of any users attempting to access CDEs or sensitive data. This requirement is core to the zero trust security methodology which is designed to limit the scope of data access and theft once an attacker has already compromised an account or system.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

User identification and related accounts for users and administrators are strictly managed throughout an account’s lifecycle.

Use an account lifecycle management solution to streamline account discovery, provisioning, monitoring, and deactivation.

Strong authentication for users and administrators is established and managed.

Replace relatively weak passwords/passphrases with stronger authentication factors like hardware tokens or biometrics.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is implemented to secure access into the CDE.

MFA should also protect access to management interfaces on isolated management infrastructure (IMI) to prevent attackers from controlling the CDE.

MFA systems are configured to prevent misuse.

Secure the MFA system itself with strong authentication and validate MFA configurations before deployment to ensure it requires two different forms of authentication and does not allow any access without a second factor.

Use of application and system accounts and associated authentication factors is strictly managed.

Whenever possible, disable interactive login on system and application accounts to prevent malicious actors from logging in with them.

Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data

Malicious actors could gain access to cardholder data by physically interacting with payment devices or tampering with the hardware infrastructure that stores and processes that data. These PCI DSS 4.0 requirements outline how to prevent physical data access.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

Physical access controls manage entry into facilities and systems containing cardholder data.

Use logical or physical controls to prevent unauthorized users from connecting to network jacks and wireless access points within the CDE facility.

Physical access for personnel and visitors is authorized and managed.

Require visitor badges and an authorized escort for any third parties accessing the CDE facility, and keep an accurate log of when they enter and exit the building.

Media with cardholder data is securely stored, accessed, distributed, and destroyed.

Do not allow portable media containing cardholder data to leave the secure facility unless absolutely necessary.

Point of interaction (POI) devices are protected from tampering and unauthorized substitution.

Use a centralized, vendor-neutral asset management system to automatically discover and track all POI devices in use across the organization.

Use of application and system accounts and associated authentication factors is strictly managed.

Whenever possible, disable interactive login on system and application accounts to prevent malicious actors from logging in with them.

Regularly monitor and test networks

Requirement 10: Log and monitor all access to system components and cardholder data

User activity logging and monitoring will help prevent, detect, and mitigate CDE breaches. PCI DSS 4.0 requires organizations to collect, protect, and review audit logs of all user activities in the CDE.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

Audit logs are implemented to support the detection of anomalies and suspicious activity, and the forensic analysis of events.

Use a user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) solution to monitor user activity and detect suspicious behavior with machine learning algorithms.

Audit logs are protected from destruction and unauthorized modifications.

Never store audit logs in public-accessible locations; use strong RBAC and least-privilege policies to limit access.

Audit logs are reviewed to identify anomalies or suspicious activity.

Use an AIOps tool to analyze audit logs, detect anomalous activity, and automatically triage and notify teams of issues.

Audit log history is retained and available for analysis.

Retain audit logs for at least 12 months in a secure storage location; keep the last three months of logs immediately accessible to aid in breach resolution.

Time-synchronization mechanisms support consistent time settings across all systems.

Use NTP to synchronize clocks across all systems to help with breach mitigation and post-incident forensics.

Failures of critical security control systems are detected, reported, and responded to promptly.

Use AIOps to automatically detect, triage, and respond to security incidents. AIOps also provides automatic root-cause analysis (RCA) for faster incident resolution.

Requirement 11: Test security of systems and network regularly

Researchers and attackers continuously discover new vulnerabilities in systems and software, so organizations must frequently test network components, applications, and processes to ensure that in-place security controls are still adequate. ge changes; ensure alerts are monitored.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

Wireless access points are identified and monitored, and unauthorized wireless access points are addressed.

Use a wireless analyzer to detect rogue access points.

External and internal vulnerabilities are regularly identified, prioritized, and addressed.

PCI DSS 4.0 requires internal and external vulnerability scans at least once every three months, but performing them more often is encouraged if your network is complex or changes frequently.

External and internal penetration testing is regularly performed, and exploitable vulnerabilities and security weaknesses are corrected.

Work with a PCI DSS-approved vendor to perform external and internal penetration testing; conduct pen testing on network segmentation controls.

Network intrusions and unexpected file changes are detected and responded to.

Use AI-powered, next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) with enhanced detection algorithms and automatic incident response capabilities.

Unauthorized changes on payment pages are detected and responded to.

Use anti-skimming technology like file integrity monitoring (FIM) to detect unauthorized payment page changes; ensure alerts are monitored.

Maintain an information security policy

Requirement 12: Support information security with organizational policies and programs

The final requirement is to implement information security policies and programs to support the processes described above and get everyone on the same page about their responsibilities regarding cardholder data privacy.

Stipulations for Compliance

Best Practices

Acceptable use policies for end-user technologies are defined and implemented.

Enforce usage policies with technical controls capable of locking users out of systems, applications, or devices if they violate these policies.

Risks to the cardholder data and environment are formally identified, evaluated, and managed.

Use a centralized patch management system to monitor firmware and software versions, detect changes that may increase risk, and deploy updates to fix vulnerabilities.

PCI DSS compliance is managed.

Service providers must assign executive responsibility for managing PCI DSS 4.0 compliance.

PCI DSS scope is documented and validated.

Frequently validate PCI DSS scope by evaluating the CDE and all connected systems to determine if coverage should be expanded.

Security awareness education is an ongoing activity.

Require all users to take security awareness training upon hire and every year afterwards; it’s also recommended to provide refresher training when someone transfers into a role with more access to sensitive data.

Personnel are screened to reduce risks from insider threats.

In addition to screening new hires, conduct additional screening when someone moves into a role with greater access to the CDE.

Risk to information assets associated with third-party service provider (TPSP) relationships is managed.

Thoroughly analyze the risk of working with third-parties based on their reporting practices, breach history, incident response procedures, and PCI DSS validation.

Third-party service providers (TPSPs) support their customers’ PCI DSS compliance.

Require TPSPs to provide their PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance (AOC) to demonstrate their compliance status.

Suspected and confirmed security incidents that could impact the CDE are responded to immediately.

Create a comprehensive incident response plan that designates roles to key stakeholders.

Isolate your CDE and management infrastructure with Nodegrid

The Nodegrid out-of-band (OOB) management platform from ZPE Systems isolates your control plane and provides a safe environment for cardholder data, management infrastructure, and ransomware recovery. Our vendor-neutral, Gen 3 OOB solution allows you to host third-party tools for automation, security, troubleshooting, and more for ultimate efficiency.

Ready to know more about PCI DSS 4.0 Requirements?

Learn how to meet PCI DSS 4.0 requirements for network segmentation and security by downloading our isolated management infrastructure (IMI) solution guide.
Download the Guide

Automated Infrastructure Management for Network Resilience

by | May 3, 2024 | Data Center Management, Increase Productivity, Monitoring & Reporting, NetDevOps, Network Automation, Out of Band Management, Remote Network Management, Streamline Deployments, Vendor Neutral Platform

Automated-Infastructure

Clients and end-users expect 24/7 access to digital services, but threats like ransomware and global political instability make it harder than ever to ensure continuous business operations. However, human error remains one of the biggest risks to business continuity, as illustrated by a misconfiguration that caused a recent McDonald’s outage. Despite the risk, many organizations must make do with lean IT teams and limited technology budgets, increasing the likelihood that an overworked engineer will make a mistake that brings down critical services.

Automated infrastructure management reduces human intervention in workflows such as device configurations, software updates, and environmental monitoring. Automation improves network resilience by mitigating the risk of errors and making it easier to recover from failures. 

How does infrastructure automation improve network resilience?

Network resilience is the ability to withstand or recover from adversity, service degradation, and complete outages with minimal business disruption. Automated infrastructure management improves resilience in three key ways:

  1. It reduces the risk of human error in configurations and updates,
  2. It catches environmental issues missed by human engineers, and
  3. It accelerates recovery by streamlining infrastructure rebuilds after failures and attacks

Let’s examine some of the infrastructure automation components and best practices that boost business resilience.

Improving Network Resilience with Automated Infrastructure Management

Technology / Best Practice

Description

Zero-touch provisioning (ZTP)

Reduces human error by enabling automatic device configurations

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Further mitigates human error by codifying VM and container configurations

Automatic configuration management

Prevents security vulnerabilities and configuration mistakes from proliferating in production by monitoring and updating in-place configs

Gen 3 OOB serial consoles

Ensure 24/7 management access, isolate the control plane from the data plane, and provide a safe recovery environment

Environmental monitoring

Automatically detects and notifies administrators of environmental issues that might affect device health

Vendor-neutral orchestration platforms

Unify infrastructure automation and management workflows to reduce complexity and ensure complete coverage

Zero-touch provisioning (ZTP)

Zero-touch provisioning (ZTP), also known as zero-touch deployment, uses software scripts or definition files to automatically configure new devices over the internet. ZTP allows teams to create and test a single configuration file, and then use it repeatedly to deploy new infrastructure. ZTP reduces the tediousness of new deployments, which in turn decreases the chances of errors. It also provides an opportunity to validate new configurations so any errors can be corrected before they’re deployed to production.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Infrastructure as code (IaC) uses software abstraction to decouple infrastructure configurations from the underlying hardware. Similar to ZTP, IaC configurations are written as scripts or definition files, but they’re used to automatically provision virtual machines (VMs) and containers. Also like ZTP, IaC improves resilience by reducing human intervention in what is otherwise a tedious manual process. IaC also facilitates automatic configuration management.

Automatic configuration management

Automatic configuration management solutions continuously monitor in-place configurations to ensure they don’t drift away from documented standards. When necessary, they automatically install updates or roll back any unauthorized changes to prevent security vulnerabilities or configuration mistakes from bringing down the network.

Gen 3 out-of-band (OOB) serial consoles

Out-of-band (OOB) serial consoles manage other infrastructure devices over a serial connection, separating the control plane from the data plane on a network dedicated to managing, troubleshooting, and orchestrating infrastructure. All OOB serial consoles improve network resilience by providing an alternative path to remote infrastructure that’s unaffected by issues on the production network. Gen 3 serial consoles go a step further by enabling vendor-neutral automation over the OOB connection. Gen 3 OOB serial consoles support third-party automation scripts and solutions and extend that automation to legacy and mixed-vendor infrastructure devices that are otherwise unsupported.

Additionally, Gen 3 OOB enables isolated management infrastructure (IMI), which prevents attackers on the production network from commandeering crown-jewel assets and vital business infrastructure. The OOB network also provides a safe environment where teams can recover from ransomware attacks without risking reinfection. Plus, a Gen 3 serial console can host all the tools teams need to automatically provision, test, and deploy new systems, accelerating recovery efforts for improved resilience.

See how Gen 3 OOB serial consoles stack up to the competition with our feature comparison chart.

Environmental monitoring

Environmental conditions like temperature, humidity, and air quality have a significant impact on the performance and lifespan of network infrastructure. That infrastructure is often housed in off-site data centers and branch offices, which means administrators may not know there’s an environmental concern until it’s already caused an error or outage. An environmental monitoring system uses sensors to collect data about conditions in remote facilities and automatically notify administrators of issues so they can respond before failures occur.  

Vendor-neutral orchestration platforms

An automated network infrastructure comprises many moving parts and can be very complex to manage, especially if they don’t interoperate. Complexity increases the workload on IT staff that’s already stretched too thin, making mistakes more likely. A vendor-neutral orchestration platform unifies all the automation and management workflows behind a single pane of glass. Teams can use the automation tools they’re most comfortable with, decreasing errors while ensuring complete coverage of mixed-vendor and legacy infrastructure. Plus, using vendor-neutral management hardware like Nodegrid Gen 3 serial consoles allows teams to consolidate network functions, automation, security, and service hosting with a single device, further reducing complexity and boosting operational efficiency.

Automated infrastructure management is easier with Nodegrid

Infrastructure automation improves an organization’s ability to withstand and recover from adverse events by reducing human error, catching environmental issues before they cause outages, and accelerating recovery from ransomware and other failures. The Nodegrid platform from ZPE Systems provides Gen 3 out-of-band management, vendor-neutral hosting for automation and other third-party software, and unified orchestration for remote, mixed-vendor, and legacy infrastructure. Nodegrid simplifies automated infrastructure management for improved network resilience. 

Ready to start your Automated Infrastructure Management for Network Resilience?

Learn more about boosting network resilience with automated infrastructure management by downloading ZPE’s Network Automation Blueprint.

Zero Trust Edge Solutions: Continuing the Zero Trust Journey

by | Feb 28, 2024 | Application Hosting, Increase Productivity, Monitoring & Reporting, NetDevOps, Network Automation, Out of Band Management, Remote Network Management, Serial Consoles, Simplify Branch Infrastructure, Vendor Neutral Platform, Virtualization, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

A glowing shield with a 0 on it overlays a glowing map of the world to represent zero trust at the edge.

The zero trust security methodology follows the principle of “never trust, always verify,” which assumes that any account or device could be compromised and should be forced to continuously establish trustworthiness. This sounds like an extreme approach, but with the frequency of high-profile data breaches and ransomware attacks steadily increasing, security teams must pivot their approach away from prevention and toward damage mitigation and recovery. Zero trust security limits the lateral movement of compromised accounts on the network by establishing micro-perimeters around network resources that continually assess an account’s behavior for suspicious activity.

Organizations also must extend zero trust security policies and controls to remote business sites at their network’s edges, such as branches, Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, and home offices. Zero trust edge solutions are software platforms that provide networking, access, and security capabilities designed specifically for the edge. This guide explains what zero trust edge solutions do and the challenges involved in using them before discussing how to build a unified ZTE platform.

Table of contents

What are zero trust edge solutions?

A zero trust edge solution combines edge-centric security functionality with remote access and networking capabilities. ZTE’s core feature is zero trust network access (ZTNA), which securely connects remote users to enterprise applications and resources, similar to a VPN. ZTNA is more secure than VPNs because it only allows users to authenticate to one resource at a time and prevents them from seeing or accessing anything else until they re-establish their identity and credentials. ZTE’s other features and capabilities vary depending on the vendor and deployment type. ZTE solutions come in three different forms:

  • As a service: Companies can purchase ZTE functionality as a cloud-based, vendor-managed service. Remote users connect to regional points of presence (POPs) to reach the ZTE stack in the cloud before being routed to enterprise resources. This deployment style is easier to deploy for organizations with lots of users in the field but few (if any) physical edge locations to host security or networking solutions.
    .
  • With SD-WAN: Some ZTE providers combine zero-trust features with software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) capabilities. SD-WAN creates a virtual network overlay that’s decoupled from the underlying WAN infrastructure, enabling centralized control and automation. Packaging ZTE and SD-WAN together helps organizations consolidate their tech stack at physical edge sites like branches, warehouses, and manufacturing plants while still offering ZTNA to work-from-home and field employees.
    .
  • Build your own: Since there are very few mature ZTE providers on the market, and it can be difficult to find pre-made solutions with all the features needed for complex, distributed edge networks, many teams opt to build their own platform by combining tools from multiple vendors. Typically, these organizations have physical branches with existing WAN infrastructure that they use as regional POPs to host ZTNA and other security solutions.

Why build your own ZTE solution?

If pre-made solutions exist, why would companies go through the hassle of creating their own zero trust edge platform? Presently, there aren’t any “complete” ZTE solutions that offer full, zero-trust protection for branches and other physical edge sites.

For example, many ZTE platforms don’t protect management ports on the control plane, leaving critical edge infrastructure like servers, switches, and power distribution units (PDUs) exposed to cybercriminals. Additionally, branch ZTE solutions rely upon production network infrastructure, so if there’s an outage or ransomware attack, remote management teams are completely cut off from troubleshooting and recovery. These solutions also lack helpful edge networking features like fleet management and automation, and their closed ecosystems limit the ability to extend their capabilities.

Building your own zero trust edge platform allows you to combine all the security, networking, and management functionality you need to get full security coverage and streamline branch operations. The key to creating a robust and efficient ZTE solution is starting with a vendor-neutral platform that can unify the entire security architecture.

How Nodegrid simplifies ZTE

Nodegrid edge networking solutions from ZPE Systems provide the perfect vendor-neutral platform for integrated zero trust edge deployments. All-in-one edge gateway routers deliver a full stack of branch networking capabilities, including out-of-band (OOB) management. OOB creates a dedicated control plane on an isolated network so remote teams have continuous access to manage, troubleshoot, and repair edge infrastructure.

Nodegrid protects the management interfaces on the OOB network with robust, zero trust security processes and controls. For example, the encryption keys for each Nodegrid device are destroyed after provisioning so that only the public key is accessible when needed for authentication to our cloud. Nodegrid devices also use the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) as a hardware security module to prevent cybercriminals from tampering with the configuration or storage.

Our platform runs on the Linux-based, x86 Nodegrid OS, which supports VMs and Docker containers for third-party applications. That means you can deploy ZTNA, SD-WAN, and other zero trust edge solutions without purchasing or managing additional hardware at each branch. Nodegrid’s OOB and failover functionality ensure those security and access solutions remain operational during ISP outages, ransomware attacks, and other disruptions. Teams can also run their favorite tools for automation, troubleshooting, and recovery on the Nodegrid platform, streamlining edge operations and ensuring their toolbox is available on the OOB network. Nodegrid also simplifies fleet management with true zero-touch provisioning to securely and automatically deploy configurations at edge business sites.

Want to unify your zero trust edge solutions with Nodegrid?

Nodegrid provides a robust, vendor-neutral platform to unify and extend your zero trust edge capabilities. Request a free demo to see Nodegrid in action. Watch Demo

IT Automation vs Orchestration: What’s the Difference?

by | Feb 26, 2024 | Application Hosting, Increase Productivity, Monitoring & Reporting, NetDevOps, Network Automation, Out of Band Management, Remote Network Management, Serial Consoles, Simplify Branch Infrastructure, Vendor Neutral Platform, Virtualization, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

it-automation-vs-orchestration

IT automation and orchestration are two important concepts in the field of information technology that are often used interchangeably but are actually quite different. IT automation focuses on individual tasks, whereas orchestration encompasses multiple tasks or even entire workflows. Each approach produces different results and helps teams meet different goals. They also have their own benefits and challenges that must be considered. This guide compares IT automation vs orchestration to clear up misconceptions and help organizations choose the right approach to streamlining their IT operations.

Table of contents
    1. IT automation vs orchestration: What’s the difference?
    2. The benefits of IT automation vs orchestration
    3. The challenges of IT automation and orchestration
    4. Tips for overcoming IT automation and orchestration challenges
    5. Choosing IT automation vs orchestration
    6. IT automation vs orchestration simplified

IT Automation vs Orchestration: What’s the Difference?

IT Automation vs Orchestration

IT automation refers to the use of technology to automate repetitive tasks and processes, including things like automated backups, software updates, and monitoring systems. The goal of IT automation is to free up time and resources for IT professionals by automating routine tasks, allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Orchestration, on the other hand, is the coordination and management of multiple processes or entire workflows. This can include things like configuring and deploying new servers, managing network connections, and monitoring the performance of many different systems. The goal of orchestration is to improve the overall efficiency of IT operations, reducing costs and enabling greater scalability.

The benefits of IT automation vs orchestration

Benefits of IT Automation vs Orchestration

IT Automation

  • Saves time
  • Reduces human error
  • Improves compliance

Orchestration

  • Increases operational efficiency
  • Improves network scalability
  • Ensures IT system reliability

One of the main benefits of IT automation is that it can save time and resources for IT professionals. By automating routine tasks, IT teams can focus on more strategic initiatives and projects. Additionally, automation helps reduce human error and increases the accuracy, speed, and efficiency of tasks. Automation also improves compliance, as automated processes are less prone to human negligence and are easier to audit.

Orchestration, on the other hand, helps improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of IT operations. By automating the coordination and management of multiple tasks, orchestration helps ensure that different systems and processes work together seamlessly. Additionally, orchestration helps improve the scalability and reliability of IT systems by ensuring different components are configured and deployed correctly.

The challenges of IT automation and orchestration

IT Automation and Orchestration Challenges

IT Complexity

Teams can’t effectively automate IT operations unless they thoroughly understand all the tasks, systems, and workflows comprising a highly complex network.

Automation Skills Gap

A high demand for automation engineers makes it difficult and expensive to recruit, train, and retain qualified IT automation and orchestration professionals.

Supporting Infrastructure

Effective automation and orchestration deployments require a robust underlying infrastructure of specialized hardware and software solutions.

One of the main challenges of automation and orchestration is the complexity of IT systems. As organizations rely more heavily on specialized technology and grow both in size and in number of business sites, IT systems become increasingly complex and difficult to manage. Automation and orchestration help reduce complexity by automating routine tasks and coordinating the management of different systems. However, teams must understand those tasks and systems well enough to know how to automate them effectively; otherwise, mistakes will proliferate or there will be gaps in automated workflows.

Another IT automation and orchestration challenge is the need for skilled professionals to deploy and manage these solutions. As automation and orchestration become more prevalent, the demand for skilled professionals has increased, making it harder (and more expensive) to recruit and retain qualified automation engineers. The alternative is for organizations to spend time and resources training existing IT staff to work with automation and orchestration.

Additionally, organizations need to invest in the technology and infrastructure necessary to support automation and orchestration. Some examples of these automation infrastructure components include:

  • Gen 3 out-of-band (OOB) serial consoles, which allow teams to deploy third-party automation on an OOB network that doesn’t rely on production infrastructure, improving security and resilience. Gen 3 OOB also moves bandwidth-hogging orchestration workflows off the production network, which reduces latency for better performance.
  • Software-defined networking, which virtualizes the control and management processes and abstracts them from underlying LAN and WAN hardware. SDN, SD-WAN, and SD-Branch technologies enable a high degree of automation for networking workflows such as load balancing, application-aware routing, and failover.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC), which turns infrastructure configurations into software code. IaC enables the use of version control, zero-touch deployments, automatic configuration management, automated security testing, and other tools and processes that support automation and improve network resilience.
  • Orchestrator software, which controls all of the automated workflows on a network. The orchestrator is the central hub for teams to create, deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot automated workflows and infrastructure.
  • AIOps, or artificial intelligence for IT operations, which analyzes all the logs and data pulled from automated infrastructure devices and security appliances. AIOps provides predictive maintenance insights, automatic root-cause analysis (RCA), enhanced threat detection, and other functionality to help support a complex, automated network infrastructure.

Tips for overcoming IT automation and orchestration challenges

While every organization will face unique IT automation and orchestration hurdles, there are two basic tips to help simplify any deployment. Using consolidated network hardware and vendor-neutral platforms can help reduce the complexity of network infrastructure, the need to hire additional staff, and the cost to deploy automation infrastructure.

  • Consolidated network hardware, such as all-in-one branch/edge gateway routers, significantly reduces the number of devices deployed at each business site. Fewer devices to automate means less complexity, and organizations save money on deployment costs like hardware overhead and automation license seats.
  • Vendor-neutral platforms, such as the Nodegrid infrastructure management platform from ZPE Systems, allow teams to use the automation and orchestration tools they’re most comfortable with regardless of provider, reducing the skills gap. Open platforms ensure seamless interoperability between all the various automated components to decrease management complexity. Vendor-neutral hardware also allows organizations to run software from multiple vendors on a single device, enabling even greater network consolidation to reduce the complexity and cost of automated infrastructure deployments.

Choosing IT automation vs orchestration

IT automation and orchestration are interconnected concepts that are frequently, but incorrectly, used interchangeably. Automation focuses on individual tasks, while orchestration manages multiple tasks and entire workflows. Both automation and orchestration can help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of IT operations, but they have their unique benefits and challenges. Organizations must carefully consider their IT systems and needs when deciding which approach to use.

IT automation vs orchestration simplified

The network automation experts at ZPE Systems have helped Big Tech brands like Amazon and Uber improve operational efficiency and resilience with IT automation and orchestration. Learn how to use these best practices to streamline your IT operations by downloading our Network Automation Blueprint.

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Network Resilience Doesn’t Mean What it Did 20 Years Ago

by | Jan 25, 2024 | Application Hosting, Data Center Management, DevOps, Edge Computing, Improve Network Security, Micro-segmentation, Minimize Impact of Disruptions, NetDevOps, Network Automation, Remote Network Management, Virtualization, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP), Zero Trust Security

Network resilience requirements have changed

This article was co-authored by James Cabe, CISSP, a 30-year cybersecurity expert who’s helped major companies including Microsoft and Fortinet.

Enterprise networks are like air. When they’re running smoothly, it’s easy to take them for granted, as business users and customers are able to go about their normal activities. But when customer service reps are suddenly cut off from their ticketing system, or family movie night turns into a game of “Is it my router, or the network?”, everyone notices. This is why network resilience is critical.

But, what exactly does resilience mean today? Let’s find out by looking at some recent real-world examples, the history of network architectures, and why network resilience doesn’t mean what it did 20 years ago.

Why does network resilience matter?

There’s no shortage of real-world examples showing why network resilience matters. The takeaway is that network resilience is directly tied to business, which means that it impacts revenue, costs, and risks. Here is a brief list of resilience-related incidents that occurred in 2023 alone:

  • FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) – An overworked contractor unintentionally deleted files, which delayed flights nationwide for an entire day.
  • Southwest Airlines – A firewall configuration change caused 16,000 flight cancellations and cost the company about $1 billion.
  • MOVEit FTP exploit – Thousands of global organizations fell victim to a MOVEit vulnerability, which allowed attackers to steal personal data for millions.
  • MGM Resorts – A human exploit and lack of recovery systems let an attack persist for weeks, causing millions in losses per day.
  • Ragnar Locker attacks – Several large organizations were locked out of IT systems for days, which slowed or halted customer operations worldwide.

What does network resilience mean?

Based on the examples above, it might seem that network resilience could mean different things. It might mean having backups of golden configs that you could easily restore in case of a mistake. It might mean beefing up your security and/or replacing outdated systems. It might mean having recovery processes in place.

So, which is it?

The answer is, it’s all of these and more.

Donald Firesmith (Carnegie Mellon) defines resilience this way: “A system is resilient if it continues to carry out its mission in the face of adversity (i.e., if it provides required capabilities despite excessive stresses that can cause disruptions).”

Network resilience means having a network that continues to serve its essential functions despite adversity. Adversity can stem from human error, system outages, cyberattacks, and even natural disasters that threaten to degrade or completely halt normal network operations. Achieving network resilience requires the ability to quickly address issues ranging from device failures and misconfigurations, to full-blown ISP outages and ransomware attacks.

The problem is, this is now much more difficult than it used to be.

How did network resilience become so complicated?

Twenty years ago, IT teams managed a centralized architecture. The data center was able to serve end-users and customers with the minimal services they needed. Being “constantly connected” wasn’t a concern for most people. For the business, achieving resilience was as simple as going on-site or remoting-in via serial console to fix issues at the data center.

Network architecture showing simplicity of data center connected via MPLS to branch office

Then in the mid-2000s, the advent of the cloud changed everything. Infrastructure, data, and computing became decentralized into a distributed mix of on-prem and cloud solutions. Users could connect from anywhere, and on-demand services allowed people to be plugged in around-the-clock. Services for work, school, and entertainment could be delivered anytime, no matter where users were.

Network architecture showing complexity of data center, CDN, remote user, branch office, all connected via many paths

Behind the scenes, this explosion of architecture created three problems for achieving network resilience, which a simple serial could no longer fix:

Too Much Work

Infrastructure, data, and computing are widely distributed. Systems inevitably break and require work, but teams don’t have the staff to keep up.

Too Much Complexity

Pairing cloud and box-based stacks creates complex networks. Teams leave systems outdated, because they don’t want to break this delicate architecture.

Too Much Risk

Unpatched, outdated systems are prime targets for packaged attacks that move at machine speed. Defense requires recovery tools that teams don’t have.

Enabling businesses to be resilient in the modern age requires an approach that’s different than simply deploying a serial console for remote troubleshooting. Gen 1 and 2 serial consoles, which have dominated the market for 20 years, were designed to solve basic issues by offering limited remote access and some automation. The problem is, these still leave teams lacking the confidence to answer questions like:

  • “How can we guarantee access to fix stuff that breaks, without rolling trucks?”
  • “Can we automate change management, without fear of breaking the network?”
  • “Attacks are inevitable — How do we stop hackers from cutting off our access?”

Hyperscalers, Internet Service Providers, Big Tech, and even the military have a resilience model that they’ve proven over the last decade. Their approach involves fully isolating command and control from data and user environments. This allows them to not only gain low-level remote access to maintain and fix systems, but also to “defend the hill” and maintain control if systems are compromised or destroyed.

This approach uses something called Isolated Management Infrastructure (IMI).

Isolated Management Infrastructure is the best practice for network resilience

Isolated Management Infrastructure is the practice of creating a management network that is completely separate from the production network. Most IT teams are familiar with out-of-band management as this network; IMI, however, provides many capabilities that can’t be hosted on a traditional serial console or OOB network. And with increasing vulnerabilities, CISA issued a binding directive specifically calling for organizations to implement IMI.

Isolated Management Infrastructure using Gen 3 serial consoles, like ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid devices, provides more than simple remote access and automation. Similar to a proper out-of-band network, IMI is completely isolated from production assets. This means there are no dependencies on production devices or connections, and management interfaces are not exposed to the internet or production gear. In the event of an outage or attack, teams retain management access, and this is just the beginning of the benefits of having IMI.

A network architecture diagram showing Isolated Management Infrastructure next to production infrastructure

IMI includes more than nine functions that are required for teams to fully service their production assets. These include:

  • Low-level access to all management interfaces, including serial, Ethernet, USB, IPMI, and others, to guarantee remote access to the entire environment
  • Open, edge-native automation to ensure services can continue operating in the event of outages or change errors
  • Computing, storage, and jumpbox capabilities that can natively host the apps and tools to deploy an IRE, to ensure fast, effective recovery from attacks

Get the guide to build IMI

ZPE Systems has worked alongside Big Tech to fulfill their requirements for IMI. In doing so, we created the Network Automation blueprint as a technical guide to help any organization build their own Isolated Management Infrastructure. Download the blueprint now to get started.

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Discuss IMI with James Cabe, CISSP

Get in touch with 30-year cybersecurity and networking veteran James Cabe, CISSP, for more tips on IMI and how to get started.

ZPE Systems – James Cabe

IT Infrastructure Management Best Practices

by | Jan 16, 2024 | Consolidation, Data Center Management, Data Center Resilience, Failover Connectivity, Increase Productivity, Minimize Impact of Disruptions, NetDevOps, NetDevOps Transformation, Network Automation, Out of Band Management, Remote Network Management, Security Service Edge (SSE), Vendor Neutral Platform, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP), Zero Trust Security

A small team uses IT infrastructure management best practices to manage an enterprise network

A single hour of downtime costs organizations more than $300,000 in lost business, making network and service reliability critical to revenue. The biggest challenge facing IT infrastructure teams is ensuring network resilience, which is the ability to continue operating and delivering services during equipment failures, ransomware attacks, and other emergencies. This guide discusses IT infrastructure management best practices for creating and maintaining more resilient enterprise networks.
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What is IT infrastructure management? It’s a collection of all the workflows involved in deploying and maintaining an organization’s network infrastructure. 

IT infrastructure management best practices

The following IT infrastructure management best practices help improve network resilience while streamlining operations. Click the links on the left for a more detailed look at the technologies and processes involved with each.

Isolated Management Infrastructure (IMI)

• Protects management interfaces in case attackers hack the production network

• Ensures continuous access using OOB (out-of-band) management

• Provides a safe environment to fight through and recover from ransomware

Network and Infrastructure Automation

• Reduces the risk of human error in network configurations and workflows

• Enables faster deployments so new business sites generate revenue sooner

• Accelerates recovery by automating device provisioning and deployment

• Allows small IT infrastructure teams to effectively manage enterprise networks

Vendor-Neutral Platforms

• Reduces technical debt by allowing the use of familiar tools

• Extends OOB, automation, AIOps, etc. to legacy/mixed-vendor infrastructure

• Consolidates network infrastructure to reduce complexity and human error

• Eliminates device sprawl and the need to sacrifice features

AIOps

• Improves security detection to defend against novel attacks

• Provides insights and recommendations to improve network health for a better end-user experience

• Accelerates incident resolution with automatic triaging and root-cause analysis (RCA)

Isolated management infrastructure (IMI)

Management interfaces provide the crucial path to monitoring and controlling critical infrastructure, like servers and switches, as well as crown-jewel digital assets like intellectual property (IP). If management interfaces are exposed to the internet or rely on the production network, attackers can easily hijack your critical infrastructure, access valuable resources, and take down the entire network. This is why CISA released a binding directive that instructs organizations to move management interfaces to a separate network, a practice known as isolated management infrastructure (IMI).

The best practice for building an IMI is to use Gen 3 out-of-band (OOB) serial consoles, which unify the management of all connected devices and ensure continuous remote access via alternative network interfaces (such as 4G/5G cellular). OOB management gives IT teams a lifeline to troubleshoot and recover remote infrastructure during equipment failures and outages on the production network. The key is to ensure that OOB serial consoles are fully isolated from production and can run the applications, tools, and services needed to fight through a ransomware attack or outage without taking critical infrastructure offline for extended periods. This essentially allows you to instantly create a virtual War Room for coordinated recovery efforts to get you back online in a matter of hours instead of days or weeks. A diagram showing a multi-layered isolated management infrastructure. An IMI using out-of-band serial consoles also provides a safe environment to recover from ransomware attacks. The pervasive nature of ransomware and its tendency to re-infect cleaned systems mean it can take companies between 1 and 6 months to fully recover from an attack, with costs and revenue losses mounting with every day of downtime. The best practice is to use OOB serial consoles to create an isolated recovery environment (IRE) where teams can restore and rebuild without risking reinfection.
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Network and infrastructure automation

As enterprise network architectures grow more complex to support technologies like microservices applications, edge computing, and artificial intelligence, teams find it increasingly difficult to manually monitor and manage all the moving parts. Complexity increases the risk of configuration mistakes, which cause up to 35% of cybersecurity incidents. Network and infrastructure automation handles many tedious, repetitive tasks prone to human error, improving resilience and giving admins more time to focus on revenue-generating projects.

Additionally, automated device provisioning tools like zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) and configuration management tools like RedHat Ansible make it easier for teams to recover critical infrastructure after a failure or attack. Network and infrastructure automation help organizations reduce the duration of outages and allow small IT infrastructure teams to manage large enterprise networks effectively, improving resilience and reducing costs.

For an in-depth look at network and infrastructure automation, read the Best Network Automation Tools and What to Use Them For

Vendor-neutral platforms

Most enterprise networks bring together devices and solutions from many providers, and they often don’t interoperate easily. This box-based approach creates vendor lock-in and technical debt by preventing admins from using the tools or scripting languages they’re familiar with, and it makes a fragmented, complex architecture of management solutions that are difficult to operate efficiently. Organizations also end up compromising on features, ending up with a lot of stuff they don’t need and too little of what they do need.

A vendor-neutral IT infrastructure management platform allows teams to unify all their workflows and solutions. It integrates your administrators’ favorite tools to reduce technical debt and provides a centralized place to deploy, orchestrate, and monitor the entire network. It also extends technologies like OOB, automation, and AIOps to otherwise unsupported legacy and mixed-vendor solutions. Such a platform is revolutionary in the same way smartphones were – instead of needing a separate calculator, watch, pager, phone, etc., everything was combined in a single device. A vendor-neutral management platform allows you to run all the apps, services, and tools you need without buying a bunch of extra hardware. It’s a crucial IT infrastructure management best practice for resilience because it consolidates and unifies network architectures to reduce complexity and prevent human error.

Learn more about the benefits of a vendor-neutral IT infrastructure management platform by reading How To Ensure Network Scalability, Reliability, and Security With a Single Platform

AIOps

AIOps applies artificial intelligence technologies to IT operations to maximize resilience and efficiency. Some AIOps use cases include:

  • Security detection: AIOps security monitoring solutions are better at catching novel attacks (those using methods never encountered or documented before) than traditional, signature-based detection methods that rely on a database of known attack vectors.
  • Data analysis: AIOps can analyze all the gigabytes of logs generated by network infrastructure and provide health visualizations and recommendations for preventing potential issues or optimizing performance.
  • Root-cause analysis (RCA): Ingesting infrastructure logs allows AIOps to identify problems on the network, perform root-cause analysis to determine the source of the issues, and create & prioritize service incidents to accelerate remediation.

AIOps is often thought of as “intelligent automation” because, while most automation follows a predetermined script or playbook of actions, AIOps can make decisions on-the-fly in response to analyzed data. AIOps and automation work together to reduce management complexity and improve network resilience.

Want to find out more about using AIOps and automation to create a more resilient network? Read Using AIOps and Machine Learning To Manage Automated Network Infrastructure

IT infrastructure management best practices for maximum resilience

Network resilience is one of the top IT infrastructure management challenges facing modern enterprises. These IT infrastructure management best practices ensure resilience by isolating management infrastructure from attackers, reducing the risk of human error during configurations and other tedious workflows, breaking vendor lock-in to decrease network complexity, and applying artificial intelligence to the defense and maintenance of critical infrastructure.

Need help getting started with these practices and technologies? ZPE Systems can help simplify IT infrastructure management with the vendor-neutral Nodegrid platform. Nodegrid’s OOB serial consoles and integrated branch routers allow you to build an isolated management infrastructure that supports your choice of third-party solutions for automation, AIOps, and more.

Want to learn how to make IT infrastructure management easier with Nodegrid?

To learn more about implementing IT infrastructure management best practices for resilience with Nodegrid, download our Network Automation Blueprint. 

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