--- title: "Network security" description: "Next generation firewalls, network segmentation and microsegmentation, intrusion prevention, DDoS protection and firewall policy management." url: https://www.expandware.com/services/networking/network-security/ section: "Services" topics: ["Networking", "Palo Alto Networks", "Fortinet FortiGate", "Cisco Secure Firewall", "Check Point"] publisher: "Expandware Private Limited" --- # Network security Next generation firewalls, network segmentation and microsegmentation, intrusion prevention, DDoS protection and firewall policy management. Segmentation and inspection that stop an attack from spreading. When an attacker gets in, the network decides how far they get. Flat networks let ransomware reach every server from one compromised laptop; segmented networks contain it. We design segmentation from how systems actually communicate, deploy and tune next generation firewalls and intrusion prevention, protect internet-facing services from denial of service, and keep firewall rules reviewed so they never accumulate into a policy nobody understands. Where it usually starts: - Any device on the network can reach any server. - Firewall rule sets have grown for years, and nobody can explain half of them. - Industrial, payment or medical devices share a network with office laptops. - Internet-facing services have no protection against denial of service. What is included: - Segmentation design: Zones and rules derived from real traffic and business needs. - Microsegmentation: Workload level controls for data centers and cloud. - Firewalls: Next generation firewalls deployed, configured and kept current. - Intrusion prevention: Inspection tuned to your traffic. - DDoS protection: Defenses for internet-facing services and links. - Rule review: Firewall policies cleaned up and reviewed on a schedule. Where it sits: Network security appears twice in the networking architecture: DDoS protection at the edge, and segmentation inside the data center that decides how far an attacker can move. Decisions to settle early: - Network firewalls or microsegmentation. Zone firewalls are simpler; workload-level controls contain more. Most estates need zones first and microsegmentation where risk is highest. - Which firewall platform. Your existing platform may be adequate once its rules are cleaned up. Replacement is justified by capability, not habit. - Cloud or on-premise DDoS protection. Large attacks need cloud scrubbing; smaller ones can be handled at the edge. Exposure decides the mix. How the work runs: Map, Traffic and critical assets. Design, Zones and policies. Enforce, Firewalls and segmentation deployed. Review, Rules audited on a schedule. How it is bought: - A fixed-fee assessment: We map real traffic between systems, review firewall rule sets and identify critical assets. You receive the findings, a segmentation outline and a fixed price. - A fixed-price build: Segmentation design and enforcement in stages, firewall and intrusion prevention deployment, DDoS protection and a rule cleanup, for the scope agreed. - Running it afterwards: Rule reviews and firewall operations can then run monthly or quarterly under our service, or be handed to your team. Worked example, a flat network and an old rule set. Say a manufacturer's office laptops, production line controllers and servers share one flat network, and its firewall holds rules built up over many years that nobody can explain. - Map: We record real traffic between systems for long enough to see the rare flows, and identify the assets an attacker would most want. - Design: Zones separate the office, production and server networks, and the rules between them allow only the flows the business needs. - Enforce: Segmentation is applied in stages with monitoring, so a missed dependency is caught and fixed before it stops a production line. - Review: The old rule set is cleaned up with the rule owners, and reviews are scheduled so it does not grow back. At the end, a compromised laptop can no longer reach the production line, every firewall rule has an owner and a reason, and the rule set is reviewed rather than inherited. (An illustration, not a client account.) What you have at the end: - Traffic map and segmentation design: How systems actually communicate, and the zones and rules that allow only what is needed. - Firewall policy set: The rules for each zone and firewall, each with an owner and a business reason. - Implementation and test records: How each control was deployed and tested, including the traffic it was confirmed to block. - Rule review reports: Rules removed, changed and confirmed at each review, and those awaiting an owner's decision. - Network security runbooks: How firewalls, intrusion prevention and DDoS defenses are operated, changed and recovered. Standards and platforms worked with: Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet FortiGate, Cisco Secure Firewall, Check Point, Illumio, Cloudflare, NIST SP 800-41, CIS Controls. Where it goes wrong, and what we design out: - Rules from assumptions. Segmentation designed on paper breaks applications. Rules come from observed traffic. - Enforcing on day one. Blocking before monitoring finds missed dependencies the hard way. Rules run in monitoring mode first. - Rule sets that only grow. Firewalls accumulate rules nobody can explain. Reviews remove what has no owner. What it changes: - Attacks contained. Segmentation stops a compromise in one zone from reaching the rest. - Rules you can explain. Every firewall rule has a reason and an owner. - Services that stay up. DDoS protection keeps internet-facing systems available under attack. How you will know it is working: - A compromised laptop cannot reach critical systems. - No firewall rule exists without someone accountable for it. - Internet-facing services stay up under attack traffic. - Rule reviews happen on schedule. Who you work with: - Security architect. Designs segmentation from observed traffic and critical assets. - Firewall engineers. Deploy and tune firewalls, intrusion prevention and DDoS defenses. - Rule review analyst. Cleans up rule sets and runs scheduled reviews with rule owners. What we need from you: - Access to firewalls and network flow data. - A list of critical systems and their owners. - Maintenance windows for enforcement. - Owners for existing firewall rules, where known. Common questions: Q: Where should segmentation start? A: Around the assets that would hurt most if they were reached: domain controllers, backups, payment and production systems. Separating those from user networks delivers most of the benefit early. Q: Is microsegmentation worth it? A: For data centers and cloud estates with many workloads, often yes. It controls traffic between individual workloads, which stops attackers moving sideways once they are inside. Q: Can you clean up an old firewall rule set? A: Yes. We analyze rule usage and traffic, remove unused and overly broad rules in stages with rollback, and document the reason for every rule that remains. Q: Do we still need firewalls with Zero Trust? A: Yes. Zero Trust reduces reliance on the network perimeter, but segmentation and inspection still limit what an attacker can reach, and they give defenders visibility. Q: How do you segment a network without breaking applications? A: By basing the rules on observed traffic rather than assumptions, applying them first in a monitoring mode that logs what would be blocked, and moving to enforcement in stages. Dependencies the monitoring reveals are reviewed with their owners before anything is blocked. Q: Can industrial and operational technology networks be segmented safely? A: Yes, with care. Industrial systems often cannot be patched and may not tolerate scanning, so they are isolated in their own zones, with tightly controlled paths to the office network and to vendors, and monitored passively. Changes are planned with the engineers who run the plant. Q: What does intrusion prevention add to a firewall? A: A firewall decides which connections are allowed; intrusion prevention inspects the traffic inside allowed connections for known attacks and exploit attempts, and blocks them. It is tuned to your traffic, because untuned it either blocks legitimate use or is left in a mode that only logs. Q: How do you protect against denial of service attacks? A: With layered defenses: provider or cloud scrubbing for large volumetric attacks, protection for web applications against floods at the application layer, and capacity and rate limits at your edge. The right mix depends on which services face the internet and what an outage of each would cost. Often paired with: 24/7 SOC and MDR, Data center networking, Identity and Zero Trust. --- Canonical page: https://www.expandware.com/services/networking/network-security/ Site index for machines: https://www.expandware.com/llms.txt Full site text: https://www.expandware.com/llms-full.txt Expandware Private Limited. Inquiries: solutions@expandware.com, +92 (333) 32 11011.