Network Segmentation: 3 Best Practices for Businesses

Cyber threats are constantly evolving so that network segmentation is a must-have strategy for keeping your business secure. By breaking your network into smaller, more manageable segments, you can protect your critical assets, control access, and beef up overall security.

Here are 3 key practices to make network segmentation work for you.

Identifying and Segmenting Your Most Important Assets

The first step in effective network segmentation is figuring out what’s most important in your network. All data and systems are not equally important; think about your financial data, intellectual property, customer info, or any other sensitive stuff that could cause major headaches if it got into the wrong hands.

Once you’ve nailed down what’s crucial, it’s time to segment those assets into their own secure zones. For example, keep your financial systems on a separate network segment from general employee systems. This way, if someone does manage to break into one part of your network, they won’t automatically have access to everything else.

Implementing Role-Based Access Controls

Once your network is segmented, the next step is to figure out who gets access to what. Not everyone in your business needs access to every corner of your network. This is where Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) comes in: Just like you wouldn’t hand out a master key to everyone in your office, you shouldn’t give unrestricted network access to everyone on your team. RBAC makes sure people only have access to what they need to do their jobs—nothing more, nothing less.

For instance, the employees in finance should only have access to financial systems, while the marketing team might just need access to the CRM. By limiting access based on roles, you reduce the chances of unauthorized access and minimize the damage if someone’s credentials get compromised.

And you want to regularly check and update these access controls, especially as people’s roles change over time.

Stay on Top of Monitoring and Updates

A big piece of the network segmentation puzzle is keeping a close eye on things and regularly updating your setup. Cyber threats are always changing, so your network segmentation strategy needs to evolve too. Continuous monitoring tools can help you spot unusual activity or unauthorized access attempts in real-time, so that you can jump on potential threats before they cause trouble.

And as your business grows and changes, your network architecture should change too. Routine reviews make sure your segmentation is still doing its job and that any new assets are properly secured. For businesses without in-house expertise, IT and network support solutions can be invaluable in setting up and maintaining these monitoring systems.

In short, network segmentation can be invaluable when it comes to protecting your business’s digital assets. Really, by identifying and segmenting your critical assets, implementing role-based access controls, and staying on top of monitoring and updates, you’ll be well on your way to a stronger cybersecurity posture.