Tufin launched TufinMate, an AI assistant that helps organizations troubleshoot network access issues across hybrid and multi-vendor network environments. TufinMate automates the secure network access enablement process across the organization, allowing a broad array of stakeholders, including those outside of traditional network security and administration roles, to ask security connectivity questions using natural language and receive answers within seconds.

It is designed to save network operations teams valuable time, speeding responses by empowering any employee who needs basic network information - such as help desk personnel, developers, and application engineers - to confirm or deny whether an outage is caused by a firewall issue. TufinMate can check if access is permitted, view traffic flows, identify issues, or open new access requests.

TufinMate also safeguards the network by enforcing the least privilege concept in security. This ensures that only people who require and are authorized to collect immediate answers to security connectivity questions are granted access. The AI assistant can then grant access to different databases and applications based on least privilege.

To see how TufinMate works, watch a video of it in action here. 

"Network security professionals are overburdened with mundane, low-value requests that take their focus away from mission-critical tasks that can move the business forward," said Ruth Gomel Kafri, Vice President of Product Management at Tufin. "AI-powered tools such as TufinMate can ease that burden through automation, making it easier for other stakeholders to gain network information, make requests, find issues, and speed mean-time-to-resolution."

Setting it apart from other AI-guided assistants, TufinMate can be configured to go beyond troubleshooting and automate specific responses or actions, thereby further streamlining processes, freeing up time for network security teams, and improving SLA compliance.

Key capabilities of TufinMate include the ability to:

• Answer questions about network access flows 
  
• Provide details about server to host connectivity and firewall devices
•  Answer access permission queries
  
• Provide details on connected devices
  
• Enforce least privilege protocol by restricting access to more granular details
  
• Provide a PDF topology map for specific paths
  
• Evaluate the risk of a network change request
  
• Automate network change requests by opening a Tufin SecureChange ticket
  
• Manage network access issues from the convenience of Microsoft Teams