The most exciting part of my job occurs when I have the opportunity to visit with a new client organization and help its leaders assess their security infrastructure and remediate any vulnerabilities. I enjoy being able to examine the current state of their cybersecurity programs and help them redesign elements to better address the modern threat environment.

Recently, I had the opportunity to engage in this type of work with one of CDW’s customers — the government of a midsized county. As we worked through the assessment, we identified two core issues that required immediate attention. First, the county’s network firewall platform was quite outdated, running technology that was over a decade old. The devices still functioned, but they were designed to protect against the threats of 10 years ago, not today’s advanced persistent threats. Our first core recommendation was that the county replace this aging firewall infrastructure with a modern next-generation firewall (NGFW) designed to stymie today’s attackers.

We also realized that the core of the county’s network lacked essential security controls. If someone gained physical access to the building and connected any device to the network, the attacker would have open access to all types of resources. There was no internal access control restricting the devices that could connect to the network and limiting the authorization of those devices based on the identity of the user. The county urgently needed a network access control (NAC) solution to address these risks and protect its network.

While we at CDW are in the business of providing IT solutions and services to our customers, behind the scenes we deal with the same operational issues that other enterprises face. Earlier this year, our leadership made the decision to close our offices and arrange for all non-essential CDW coworkers to start working remotely.

Over the course of a weekend, our Information Technology teams gained firsthand knowledge of what our customers were either already going through or soon going to be. It was a tall order to tackle the enterprise networking, storage, security, collaboration and communication needs to allow 7,100 coworkers to work from home, but our teams rose to the task. Now, we’re sharing our experience with our customers.

As organizations across the country have moved to remote work models, many have reported an increase in cyberattacks. Cybercriminals, it seems, are taking advantage of the public health crisis to exploit security vulnerabilities in home-based computer systems. What can organizations do to minimize the chances that their shift to remote work results in an expensive breach? We recommend a multipronged approach that combines the use of security tools and end-user education.

In my work with CDW customers, I often come across technology leaders who want to improve their cybersecurity posture but aren’t really sure where to start. They might recognize that their organizations need to improve their cybersecurity controls but don’t know where their investments will pay off the most.

When I hear concerns like this, I immediately look to the Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). While there are many different cybersecurity standards out there, I prefer this one because it uses plain language to describe the five most important activities in cybersecurity. I’d like to walk you through this framework using two different examples.

Over the past few months I’ve spent a lot of time working with and researching some of the top software-defined WAN vendors in the market to continue developing CDW’s Professional Services. In this blog series, I’d like to share overviews of each solution, my thoughts, strengths and areas for improvement that I think apply to each solution. I’ll cover each vendor with a specific and technical lens.

We’ll kick off this series with Cisco SD-WAN, formerly Viptela.

The standard defenses of IT security are fairly well-known: Firewalls, anti-virus, passwords and more. But what was sufficient yesterday is no longer enough in a security landscape where social engineering and advanced persistent threats run rampant. Next-gen firewall technologies offers significant enhancements and improvements on their predecessors. Application visibility is much better with Palo Alto…