Introduction
A global professional services Firm has put Nipper solutions at the heart of its highly respected firewall assessment service. It has used Nipper InfraSight for several years to automate the initial analysis – enabling the Firm to deliver detailed reports to its customers at speed. It estimates Nipper InfraSight reduces the review effort by approximately half compared with a fully manual review.
Now, it is introducing Nipper OmniSight to support more frequent assessments, reflecting the increased pace of change in the cyber threat landscape and expanding the potential customer base.
The client
Cybersecurity Consulting practice of a specialist advisory Firm
Over 60 years ago, the Firm expanded from its heritage in financial advisory services to become a broader consulting Firm.
It is trusted by its customers – primarily growing organizations across the United States – to offer an independent, expert view on key strategic and specialist issues. So, it was a logical step to add cybersecurity consulting to its portfolio of services in 1996.
Today, the Cybersecurity Consulting group provides security assessments, firewall and network architecture reviews, penetration testing, cloud security services, and compliance-related assessments. Though it supports customers across all sectors, a significant portion of its current workload is for financial institutions.
The challenge
How Nipper InfraSight powers firewall security assessments
Some of the most in-demand services the Firm provides are firewall configuration reviews and network security assessments, as its customers recognize the need to validate the robustness of their network's “front door”. The emergence of AI-enabled threats has magnified the risk and led to greater awareness of the need to ensure that network devices are themselves protected and that they are correctly enforcing access controls.
But in-depth analysis of firewall configuration takes time: as rules have been added over the years and short-term policies incorporated to address specific needs, the complexity of the code grows.
Examining this manually is a major challenge, even for security experts; multiply that by the number of devices on a growing organization's business network, and the task very quickly becomes too great to deliver. It would also become a very high professional services cost.
The solution and process
Automating firewall configuration analysis with Nipper InfraSight
The Firm has used Nipper InfraSight for several years to speed up analysis without compromising accuracy or consistency, having concluded that no other option matches it on accuracy, speed and usability.
It works like this: customers provide configuration files for all their firewalls, whether from the same vendor or multiple providers, to the Cybersecurity Consulting team.
One of the team then uploads these to Nipper InfraSight, running on air-gapped machines in its own environment.
Nipper InfraSight analyzes the configuration file against the latest best practice and vendor hardening advice, checking the firewall has been patched to recommended standards and whether it is operating in line with business rules.
“Nipper InfraSight excels at vulnerability tracking. It is extremely accurate and provides details from the vendor website to confirm compliance with latest releases or pinpoint anything that has not been done.”
Results
The Nipper technology advantage: fast, accurate, reliable analysis
Nipper InfraSight is integral to the process.
Crucially, it provides these reliable findings across firewalls from almost all major vendors (following the recent addition of Meraki) at speed: far faster than the team could operate if it had to analyze configuration files manually.
“We estimate that Nipper InfraSight can reduce our review effort by approximately half compared with a fully manual review.”
“Because it automates a significant portion of the initial review and applies consistent analysis across technologies, Nipper InfraSight reduces repetitive work and gives our consultants more time for validation, higher-risk investigation, and remediation guidance.”
Offline analysis feature
Offline analysis: a unique feature of Nipper solutions
One of the most important factors for the professional services Firm is that Nipper solutions operate offline, with no need to link to its customer networks. Instead, team members upload the relevant configuration files into an air-gapped environment.
More secure
It is more secure, with no external access to the customer device data.
No network impact
It means there's no impact on the customer networks.
Full control
And it gives the team full control of the analysis process.
The next steps
Expanding the offer with Nipper OmniSight
With regulators focusing more closely on networks, the Firm is now also increasingly using Nipper InfraSight as a tool to support CMMC and PCI compliance reviews, confirming that network devices are correctly configured and enforcing relevant policies.
But the team sees even greater potential from the adoption of Titania’s exposure management platform, Nipper OmniSight, which will allow it to scale up the existing analysis, deliver faster and underpin new service offerings.
Nipper OmniSight offers bulk import of configuration files, automated report execution and a dashboard providing executive insights and trends over time.
One further advantage is how quickly Nipper OmniSight compares configuration files pre-assessment and post-remediation, giving customers the assurance that the steps they have taken have improved their cybersecurity posture.
“We like the advanced dashboard, that offers an alternative to the output files. As well as visualizing trends, it allows easy drill down to find the exact issue and its remediation.”
Monthly posture reviews
Nipper OmniSight enables monthly cybersecurity posture reviews
The ability to scale up assessments without sacrificing speed also offers a new opportunity.
The option of a more frequent assessment against the latest CVEs is an advantage for larger organizations, who are being challenged by regulators to move to more regular monitoring.
However, the team sees a major opportunity to offer a new service for smaller organizations with less IT staff. The rapid posture check through Nipper OmniSight will identify priority issues for them to tackle that month or quarter; that in turn enables them to deliver continuous improvement of their cybersecurity, without overwhelming them with huge numbers of tasks.
“We've been using Nipper InfraSight for point-in-time reviews, but Nipper OmniSight allows us to automate the process. That means we can offer a more frequent service: a monthly touchpoint looking at current cyber posture.”
Partnership
Titania and the Firm's partnership: ongoing product support and collaboration
The Firm will be one of the first to use Nipper OmniSight commercially, a testament to its trust in Titania's solutions and support.
That collaboration has led to several new capabilities within Nipper solutions, reflecting Titania’s understanding of the Firm's needs – and it’s why Nipper remains central to how the Firm delivers cybersecurity assurance to its customers.
“We have a great partnership. Titania has supported us through product demonstrations, technical enablement, responsive support, product discussions, and assistance with questions or issues.”
