Network Connection Diagnostics with Tufin: Deep Analysis for Effective Security

In today’s dynamic network landscape, where threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated and performance demands are growing, prompt and accurate network connection diagnostics is becoming critical. Imagine a situation: users complain about slow application performance, business-critical processes slow down, and the sources of problems remain unclear. According to statistics, network downtime for an hour can cost a large company from several thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the scale of the business and the criticality of the affected services. The solution to this problem is Tufin, a platform that provides deep network visibility, automated network traffic analysis, and tools for effective network troubleshooting and enhanced network security.

Why is Tufin necessary for network connection diagnostics?

Traditional diagnostic methods, such as manual log analysis and ping, are often insufficient to identify complex problems in modern networks. Manual analysis requires highly skilled specialists and a large amount of time. Tufin offers a comprehensive approach, combining network traffic analysis, security policy management, and network device configuration automation into a single platform. Tufin automatically correlates data from different sources (firewalls, routers, SIEMs), which allows you to quickly determine the root cause of the problem, which is almost impossible with manual analysis. This allows technical specialists to quickly identify and fix problems, ensuring uninterrupted network operation and protection against threats.

Benefits of using Tufin for network diagnostics:

• Improved network visibility: Tufin provides a complete visualization of network infrastructure, including firewall rules, routing, and network device configuration, allowing you to quickly identify potential problems. Configuration data is collected via SSH, API (e.g., REST API), and SNMP. Telnet, SSH v1/v2, SNMP v1/v2c/v3 protocols are supported.
• Automated network troubleshooting: The platform automatically analyzes traffic anomalies, identifies configuration errors, and offers recommendations for their elimination. Tufin identifies configuration errors such as misconfigured firewall rules, duplicate rules, and overly permissive rules that violate the principle of least privilege.
• Risk reduction: Tufin helps identify and eliminate vulnerabilities in firewall rules and network device configurations, reducing the risk of cyberattacks. For example, it checks rules for compliance with CIS (Center for Internet Security) best practices.
• Compliance with security requirements: The platform provides security policy compliance monitoring and helps organizations comply with regulatory requirements such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR. Security policies based on NIST, ISO standards, and custom policies are supported.
• Improved incident resolution time: Tufin significantly reduces the time required for network troubleshooting thanks to automated analysis and visualization. For example, at Company X, incident resolution time decreased from 8 hours to 2 hours after implementing Tufin.

Deep Dive into Tufin’s Functionality for Network Infrastructure Diagnostics

Tufin offers a wide range of features designed for network connection diagnostics and ensuring network security. Let’s examine the key components and their practical applications:

SecureTrack: Network Visibility and Security Policy Analysis

SecureTrack is the central component of the Tufin platform, providing complete network visibility and security policy analysis. It collects configuration and traffic data from various network devices, such as firewalls, routers, and switches, from various network equipment vendors, and presents it in an easy-to-analyze format.

• Firewall Rule Analysis: SecureTrack automatically analyzes firewall rules, identifies redundant (e.g., rules with the same source/destination/service), shadowed (rules overlapped by more general rules), and unused rules, as well as rules that violate security policies.
• Traffic Path Tracing: The traffic path tracing function allows you to visualize the path of traffic between two points in the network, which helps identify bottlenecks and potential problems with routing. SecureTrack uses routing table analysis and firewall configuration analysis. A limitation of the tracing is the support of not all types of tunnels and encryption.
• Compliance Monitoring: SecureTrack provides automatic compliance checks with security policies and regulatory requirements, generating compliance reports. Standards such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOX, NERC CIP, and others are supported.

SecureChange: Change Automation and Workflow Management

SecureChange automates the process of making changes to the network configuration, from the change request to its implementation and verification. This reduces the time required to make changes, reduces the risk of errors, and increases the efficiency of network administrators.

• Automated Change Planning: SecureChange automatically analyzes the impact of proposed changes on security policies and generates recommendations for their implementation. SecureChange uses network modeling to analyze the impact of changes.
• Workflow Management: The platform provides tools for managing the change process, including approving requests, assigning tasks, and tracking change status. SecureChange supports integration with incident management systems, such as ServiceNow, to automatically create tickets for changes.
• Automatic Change Verification: After changes are made, SecureChange automatically verifies their compliance with security policies and regulatory requirements, generating verification reports. SecureChange runs tests after changes are made and verifies compliance with security policies.

Practical examples of using Tufin to troubleshoot network problems

Let’s consider a few practical examples demonstrating how Tufin can help in troubleshooting network problems:

Example 1: Diagnosing application performance issues

Users complain about the slow performance of a critical application. Using SecureTrack, you can perform traffic path tracing between the client and the application server, identify bottlenecks and traffic anomalies. For example, you can discover that traffic passes through several firewalls where complex firewall rules are applied, slowing down its passage (for example, a rule with a large number of objects, requiring complex processing). Next, SecureChange will help optimize these firewall rules to improve application performance. SecureTrack will suggest corrections for incorrect firewall rules, for example, provide ready-made configuration scripts for optimizing rules.

Example 2: Detecting incorrect firewall rules

A security audit revealed the presence of incorrect firewall rules, which may pose a threat to network security. SecureTrack automatically analyzes firewall rules, identifies rules that allow access to critical resources from untrusted networks, and offers recommendations for correcting them. SecureChange automates the process of making changes to firewall rules, ensuring their correct configuration.

Example 3: Detecting network traffic anomalies

An intrusion detection system (IDS) recorded suspicious network traffic, indicating a possible attack. SecureTrack can be used to analyze network traffic, identify sources of anomalous traffic, and determine affected resources. SecureTrack correlates traffic anomalies with specific firewall rules or device configurations, for example, it detects that traffic to a suspicious IP address is allowed by rule X on firewall Y. This information can be used to block anomalous traffic and prevent further spread of the attack.

Integration of Tufin with Existing Infrastructure

Tufin easily integrates with existing network infrastructure, supporting a wide range of firewalls, routers, switches, and other network devices from various network equipment vendors. The platform also provides an API for integration with other IT infrastructure management systems, such as SIEM, ITSM, and CMDB. Supported vendor versions should be specified in the Tufin documentation.

Example API request to get information about firewall rules:

curl -X GET -H “Content-Type: application/json” -H “Authorization: Bearer” https:///api/v1/rules?device_id=123

Supported integrations include:

• Firewalls: Check Point (R80 and above), Cisco (ASA, Firepower), Palo Alto Networks (PAN-OS), Fortinet (FortiOS), Juniper Networks (SRX), and others.
• Routers and Switches: Cisco, Juniper Networks, Arista Networks, and others.
• SIEM: Splunk, IBM QRadar, ArcSight, and others. Tufin sends notifications of security policy violations to SIEM in CEF format.
• ITSM: ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, and others.

Tufin Scalability for Large Enterprise Networks

Tufin is designed with network scalability requirements in mind and can be easily deployed in large enterprise networks with thousands of network devices. The platform supports a distributed architecture, allowing you to scale performance and fault tolerance as needed.

Key scalability features:

• Distributed Architecture: Tufin components, such as data collectors, event processing servers, and databases, can be deployed on multiple servers, providing performance improvement and fault tolerance.
• Large Network Support: The platform can manage networks with thousands of network devices and millions of firewall rules.
• Automatic Scaling: Tufin supports automatic resource scaling in the cloud environment for AWS and Azure, providing optimal performance and cost savings.

Improving the efficiency of network administrators with Tufin

Tufin automates many routine tasks performed by network administrators, such as security policy management, firewall rule analysis, and network troubleshooting. This allows network administrators to focus on more strategic tasks, such as network planning, security optimization, and implementing new technologies. Task automation frees up time for more important projects and improves productivity.

Task automation:

• Automated Change Management: Automating network changes reduces the time required to make changes and reduces the risk of errors. Automating one change can save a network administrator up to 50% of their time.
• Automatic Security Policy Analysis: SecureTrack automatically analyzes security policies and identifies inconsistencies, allowing you to quickly eliminate them. SecureTrack performs security policy analysis daily.
• Automated Network Troubleshooting: The platform automatically analyzes traffic anomalies and offers recommendations for their elimination. Tufin offers specific recommendations for troubleshooting, for example, “block IP address X by creating a new rule on firewall Y” or “modify existing rule Z on firewall A, restricting access to port 80 only to trusted networks”.

Tufin provides several deployment options: on-premise, cloud (AWS, Azure), and hybrid deployment. Licensing models include a subscription based on the number of devices and perpetual licenses. Details on licensing can be found on the official Tufin website.

In conclusion, Tufin offers a comprehensive solution for network connection diagnostics, ensuring network security, and automating network management. Thanks to improved network visibility, automated analysis, and powerful network troubleshooting tools, Tufin helps organizations reduce risks, improve network performance, and increase the efficiency of network administrators. Consider implementing Tufin to optimize your network infrastructure and provide robust protection against modern threats.

To learn more about how Tufin can help your organization, contact us for a personalized consultation or demonstration.

More information about products and integrations can be found in the official Tufin documentation.