“Seeing the Unseen” in Firewall Management

In his presentation titled “Seeing the Unseen” at the IDC Security Road Show, Serkan Özden, Founder and CEO of Opinnate, highlighted critical issues often overlooked in firewall management.

Serkan Özden stated the following:

One of the key issues identified was the presence of overly permissive or forgotten firewall rules. We liken this situation to a building with its doors left wide open. You wouldn’t sleep soundly in such a building, would you? Similarly, overly permissive or unused rules in IT infrastructures pose a danger, much like those open doors. Consequently, it becomes difficult to speak of a truly secure information system.

How can we resolve this? At Opinnate, we address this problem with our passive monitoring solution. Through passive monitoring, we collect and process all firewall traffic logs starting from the moment Opinnate is deployed. We store this data in a Big Data architecture using a specialized format. This allows you to perform rule analysis based on the past 30 days of data at any time and subsequently tighten your rules. It enables you to understand how a rule can be restricted and which rules are actually in use. This approach is akin to issuing access cards in the building analogy; the ability to perform this analysis using historical data is what sets us apart from our competitors. While competing solutions typically focus on forward-looking monitoring, we analyze historical data.

Another important topic is the annual rule review process. Although many organizations managing firewalls claim to conduct these reviews, meeting the expectations of standards such as ISO 27001 and PCI is not always achieved. We enable rule review processes to be conducted exactly as required by audits. By assigning ownership for each rule, we ensure that automated emails are sent to the designated owners on an annual basis, thereby empowering you to take action regarding the rules.

In summary, we addressed two distinct topics within the framework of “Seeing the Unseen”: our passive monitoring approach and rule review processes. These topics were discussed in the context of rule lifecycle management workflows. Additionally, we shared detailed information regarding the general features and architecture of the new version of Opinnate.