Would Your Network Pass a Configuration Compliance Audit?

How confident are you that your network would pass a configuration compliance audit at this very moment? If you’re like most network teams, the answer is not very confident. Frightening, I know.

In fact, it’s actually pretty rare to have confidence in your configuration management processes, regardless of domain. According to EMA Research, total confidence in network compliance is rare and most IT organizations know theirconfiguration management processes need improvement.

You know the intent of your network. You know how you want your network to behave. You know what network and security policies you want to impose. So why are you still lacking confidence in your network’s ability to comply with your intent?

A lack of end-to-end network automation.

It’s Not an Isolated Problem, Confidence is Low Across All Networking Domains

The good news for you is that you’re not alone. Whether you’re responsible for networking in the data center, LAN, WAN or cloud, everyone is feeling the worry of failing an audit. Current configuration management processes across the board are causing concern.

The bad news is that means every network domain is exposed to unnecessary risks. Across every domain, network teams are NOT confident that their network will pass a compliance audit. This is the percentage of how much confidence there is to pass an audit:

This lack of confidence end-to-end, from the data center to the cloud and down to the access layer, is alarming. A compliance failure in any domain can impact the performance and security of all other domains. Network managers need to impose configuration compliance controls end-to-end.

But how?

Tool Fragmentation is Leading to Inconsistent Network Controls

We all know that manual processes lead to lost confidence as they inherently leave room for error at every step of the process. Three out of four IT organizations are at least somewhat concerned that their configuration management process could cause errors that lead to security issues or performance problems.

But have you considered why this concern is still so prevalent? The correlation between audit confidence and use of network auto¬mation varies from domain to domain, verifying what we already know. IT organizations often use different types of automation tools from one domain to another. While they might be satisfied with the automation they use in the LAN, they are less satisfied with the tools they use in the data center. The frag¬mentation of tools leads to inconsistent network controls.

Each team has their own tool or solution in place, automating just a small portion of the entire network. These fragmented tools make it impossible to have consistent configuration across your network, ultimately assuring the fate of a non-compliant network.

The Right Network Automation Tool Can Solve Network Compliance

Network teams have been stuck in this fragmented approach to tools and configuration management, which causes automation to happen in pockets, focused on tasks and domains instead of full end-to-end processes. Having one tool to orchestrate them all enables the creation of unified automation, connecting all your tools, allowing for the use of the right tool for the right job, regardless of domain or vendor.

This can only be done by finding a flexible solution that can be leveraged by every networking domain, instead of each team being stuck managing configuration in a vacuum with their own point solutions. By each domain being able to bring their own automation and leverage the right tool for the job, you now have the freedom to interchange tools as needed to have the best of breed and ensuring full confidence that your network will pass a compliance audit.

At Itential, we are strong advocates for a “Right tool, Right Job” approach to network automation and orchestration. We built our platform to make it as easy as possible to integrate with as wide a variety of systems as possible, giving teams the ability to automate configuration management across their ENTIRE network regardless of domain, team, technology, or skillset.

The Itential Automation Platform is not only the most flexible platform on the market, but it’s the only platform built to support configuration across both network and cloud infrastructure. It provides robust capabilities to support automated configuration management, ensure compliance, and mitigate manual operations.

To learn more about Itential’s approach to automated network configuration management, click here or to read the full EMA report click here.