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LOCKNET

Is Your Network Vulnerable?

August 28, 2008

Would you know if somebody had invaded your network and done damage? Have you
assessed how vulnerable your network is?  Have you locked down the perimeter of your network so that it is impenetrable from the outside and protected from individuals on the inside who wish to access your data or cause harm?  

Like soldiers guarding a military stockade, sometimes you need to “walk” the perimeter of your network security to check for vulnerabilities and breaches.

“When you configure your firewall, you have to put some rules in place to allow appropriate traffic to flow into and out of your network,” advises Chuck Smith, chief security officer for LOCKNET™, Inc. “That should be checked periodically to be sure what it’s designed to do it is still doing.”

Assess your network’s vulnerability. The firewall needs to be updated with the most current patches. While guidelines, especially for financial regulatory agencies, recommend testing the system once a year, Smith says LOCKNET™ advises testing be done more often, especially whenever changes have been made to the network.

Whenever changes are made, ask your IT support designee for verification that the firewall is up to date and has been tested. “There are some situations,” Smith points out, “where they can’t do an upgrade because it would block a legacy application that is running. Ask that they document any work done so that in the future we understand why something was or wasn’t done.”

Assessments also need to be done at the individual user level, too. “Are you keeping those devices current with patches as they come out?” Smith asks. He notes that Microsoft releases new patches on the second Tuesday of each month.

Is your firewall configured properly to safely interact with the network? Test to see that it allows users to access data securely.

Smith advises firms to conduct security awareness training monthly. Remind employees to not open emails if they don’t know where they came from. Talk about day-to-day issues that employees should be aware of, and keep a significant security posture before them.

Ideally, Smith says, his firm likes to be called in before a firewall breach occurs so that damage can be minimized. “There is always a window of opportunity for malicious people to get in, he says, so the trick is to discover a breach as soon as possible. But there is no way to make your environment 100 percent secure.”

To maximize exposure yet fend off unwanted attacks, what really needs to happen is that security should be multilayered by implementing more than one piece of hardware or software to prevent a breach. Smith recommends a combination of firewall, spyware and anti-break-in software.