<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\nNetwork security architecture goals define what to do, but best practices offer guidance on how to implement those goals effectively. Best practices address one or more goals and will reinforce other best practices, starting with iterative planning. Others seek centralized control, employee training, defense in depth, efficient design, least privilege access, resilience, and testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iterative Planning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Iterative planning addresses the goal to accept reasonable and appropriate risk. Tie plans to business objectives and risk to create verifiable key objectives and milestones. Future incidents and testing results inform future iterations for adjustments or additions to existing plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Centralized Control<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Centralized control promotes data integrity and effective control goals through consistent security measures. Centralization to a small number of experts eliminates ad hoc and inconsistent security that introduces risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cybersecurity Training<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Cybersecurity training ensures effective controls throughout the organization. General employee training creates a security-oriented organization aware of key threats and trends. Specific training on security tools reduces barriers to adoption and improves their effectiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defense in Depth<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Defense in depth assumes that any single security control may fail. Additional security layers implement effective controls and assure data confidentiality by adding additional insurance against breaches, zero day vulnerabilities, or tool failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Economic Design<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Economic design improves the effectiveness of controls. Components of economic design include virtualization to maximize asset utilization, simplifying into easy-to-test components, and attack surface minimization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Least Privilege Access<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Least privilege access enforces data confidentiality through specified levels of access from non-privileged (public, DMZ) to most privileged (top secret). Least privilege should default to denial of access and functions should separate from the objects they act upon for granular access control. Similarly, resources should be segregated by security, with security controls applied between trust levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Resilience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Resilience, also known as disaster recovery planning, maintains data availability. Data backups and recovery processes are cited as key components of resilience, but resilience also requires redundancy of operations and security devices in case of failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Testing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Tests deliver measurable efforts through vulnerability scans, log analysis, or monitoring. The detection of corrupted data, device failure, or indicators of compromise will trigger incident response mechanisms to limit damage, recover the network, and provide information needed for iterative planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n