Often times, to meet unique goals, federal agencies need to rely on custom applications.  While using custom apps brings a distinct set of advantages in terms of meeting an agency’s critical mission, it does rather complicate the ability to provide top-level security.   While the IT team can see what is happening at the perimeter of a custom environment, once the user is inside the custom application, it’s as if they’ve stepped behind a curtain and visibility into how the application is used is lost.  While that may not seem like a security challenge on the surface, if you consider that one of the biggest risks to federal agencies is an attack by a trusted insider, then knowing what’s going on inside your apps is of vital importance.

So what’s a federal agency to do? 

One possible solution is to leverage Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention Systems (NGIPS) that give administrators the ability to add application control to a network security solution.  To learn more about NGIPS and how it can improve visibility and overall security click here.