Why you should consider integrating NetOps and SecOps

Network operations (NetOps) and security operations (SecOps) teams have worked independently for decades. And they’ve been largely successful, each team focused on different areas of the network. But as networks have grown larger and increasingly complex, these teams simply can’t afford to maintain their independence.

The advent of cloud computing, software-defined networks (SDN) and a host of other complexities have rendered these siloed roles and operations inefficient and potentially damaging. Maintaining silos between these two teams is simply no longer practical, and the two must join together, or share tools and resources at a minimum, to efficiently achieve their goals.

There are many reasons why NetOps and SecOps should be acting as one, among them:

Security and management challenges

Networks are growing exponentially, and they must be capable of offering blazing fast speeds while also handling large volumes of data and traffic. The trend toward complex networks has also resulted in a large number of endpoints, all which must be secured. This has resulted in a need for stable network performance and also requires security throughout the network, including the perimeter.

But traffic bottlenecks can negatively impact performance, just as security breaches can slow a network or bring it down entirely. Security and network performance have become inextricably linked, and the two areas must now be handled holistically to ensure network performance and security are thoroughly and appropriately addressed.

Silos impact network performance and efficiency

When NetOps and SecOps teams operate independently of each other, they often duplicate efforts. This results in waste, redundancies and financial and productivity losses. Silos are simply not practical any longer when trying to achieve a secure, high-performing network.

Maintaining silos between these two critical teams also means they cannot share data and knowledge. SecOps teams often can’t access critical data about network performance and orchestration, while NetOps teams may not have access to security incident reports that can severely impact network performance. Silos can significantly hurt an organization’s bottom line, while also causing it to miss out on opportunities to improve network performance, strengthen security and enjoy better business outcomes overall.

Financial fallout

The real long-term loss from keeping NetOps and SecOps siloed will be network performance degradations, security breaches and incidents, and their resulting financial fallout.

Accedian research conducted with Sapio Research, and surveying 1000+ IT decision makers, examined the damage from annual network degradations, and estimated performance issues occurred four or five times per year, impacting anywhere from 28 to 55 working days.

The result was a 30 percent productivity loss for both IT and the core business, and an annual price tag of close to $560,000. And that’s just from network performance degradations. The financial losses from security breaches can be devastating for companies of any size.

The time has come to bring down the silos between NetOps and SecOps. By integrating these teams into a holistic NetSecOps team, or at least facilitating tool sharing and collaboration, businesses can avoid some of the dangers listed above.

To learn more about how to promote integration and collaboration between NetOps and SecOps teams, check out our guide, How to Integrate NetOps with SecOps.

In the guide, we discuss the current challenges of separate NetOps and SecOps teams in more detail, look at the benefits of combining NetSecOps, and where businesses should start with the process.