IP Fabric announced the launch of Firewall Policy Management in collaboration with Network to Code. IP Fabric integrates with Network to Code's open source Enterprise Network Source of Truth and Automation Platform, Nautobot, to automate firewall rule creation, validation and deployment. The solution delivers vendor-neutral visibility, which is essential for enterprises managing multiple firewalls across on-premises and multi-cloud environments.

Many modern enterprises struggle with an inefficient and error-prone firewall rule request process. Application product owners frequently lack networking and vendor-specific expertise, creating time-consuming back-and-forth and forcing network engineers to manually verify network paths, correct request details and configure rules. This fragmented workflow leads to inefficiencies in firewall policy management and critical compliance gaps.

IP Fabric delivers an automated, integrated solution for security and visibility across multi-vendor environments by automatically discovering and contextualizing the entire network infrastructure. The platform applies more than 160 intent-based security and compliance checks to identify risks and inefficiencies. And Path Lookup determines which firewalls network traffic traverses, ensuring policies are correctly applied and up to date.

"With Skybox ceasing operations, there's a gap for independent solutions that can automate cross-vendor firewall management," said Pavel Bykov, CEO and co-founder of IP Fabric. "By combining our capabilities with Nautobot's policy automation and remediation, we deliver a complete solution for enterprises managing multiple firewall policies across diverse environments."

Integrated with Nautobot's Application Dictionary and Firewall Modules App

By integrating with Nautobot's Application Dictionary, IP Fabric leverages its vendor-agnostic firewall rule abstraction capability, allowing users to define high-level application connectivity requirements (e.g., "Connect App A to App B") without needing to configure vendor-specific settings. Additionally, the integration with Nautobot's Firewall Models App offers a structured data schema for modeling Layer 4 firewall policies and extended access control lists (ACLs), ensuring consistency and efficiency in firewall rule management.

"Two things are happening in tandem: Enterprises are deploying more firewalls across increasingly diverse environments, while cyber threats are growing more sophisticated," said Jason Edelman, CTO and founder of Network to Code. "Traditional firewall management approaches simply can't keep up - firewalls now have more to defend and are facing more advanced adversaries. A comprehensive and automated approach to firewall policy management is essential to ensuring enterprises stay secure, compliant and resilient against evolving threats."

Key Benefits of IP Fabric and Network to Code's Firewall Policy Management

• Firewall Rule Automation: Define high-level application connectivity requirements using a vendor-neutral abstraction to ensure standardized, consistent policies across multi-vendor environments.
• Seamless Policy Management: Provide a vendor-agnostic framework for modeling firewall policies, simplifying the management of firewall rules across diverse environments.
• Intelligent Network Path Analysis: Perform path lookups and firewall traversal analysis to determine which firewalls are impacted by policy changes, ensuring accurate rule enforcement.
• Automated Change Management and Deployment: Generate change requests, push approved firewall configurations and validate implementation through post-deployment security checks.
• Policy Lifecycle Automation: Eliminate manual inefficiencies, reduce errors, and ensure continuous monitoring and enforcement of security policies across the network.
• Synchronize Data Between Systems: Bi-directional synchronization automatically pulls data from IP Fabric, Tufin and more into Nautobot, and pushes data from Nautobot to them.