01 July Computer Networking / How to Guides / Security

Security: How to secure your network from intrusion.

Network Security: How to secure your network from external intrusion.

Network Security Review

You should consider your network security to be at least as important as securing your wallet and credit card from theft. If I were to ask you where your credit card was, I imagine you would respond with something like ‘in my wallet’. Knowing that it is in your wallet, I just need to find you wallet now. I’d hazard a guess that its most likely in your pocket like where almost everyone else keeps theirs.

Naturally then, if you want to avoid getting your wallet pick pocketed, you should not store your wallet in the obvious place. Try putting it somewhere that people would not look. Placing a wallet in your shoe may not be practical but at least there people are not likely to take it.

Considering this then, your first step in opting to secure your network from intrusion by a hostile force is to know where your network border is. This is fundamental to beginning the process of securing your network. What may not be obvious at first is where does your network start and end. You might be inclined to say it ends at your Internet service provider.

Borderless Networking

Tell me then, if your Internet service provider is the end of your network, where is your e-mail server pointing to? Do you use your Internet service provider’s email platform or perhaps like many others you use Google Mail for your email platform. There are many other places which your email might be located. These servers whilst they may not be managed by you directly are by definition your mail servers and therefore should be factored into your network.

Redefining your Network Scope

The Internet service provider’s network is not something I have control over. Well in most likely hood you are correct there. However that does not mean that there is nothing you can do in order to deal with this problem. You have a number of activities which you should be able to take action upon even over networks you have no direct control over the reduce the threat of a network attack.

Virtual Private Networking

Using a secure encrypted session between the normally considered edge of your network; where you get your internet connection from you can establish a encrypted virtual network between your network and your remote networking points. This secure tunnel would see that traffic sent between your hosts and your remote servers remains fairly secure. There is no such thing as an unbreakable encryption so I’m being very cautious of my wording there.

Mac Address Lock Down

You know your local network, you know how many computers you have, how many printers you have. This should match the number of devices on your network. If you have more mac addresses assigned in your network than you have known devices, you may have a problem.

Using Secure Socket Layers

Have you noticed that when you go online to websites to purchase items the address in your browser changes from http:// to https:// ? This is because your browser has been instructed that this page needs to be sent to the server in an encrypted form. The encryption in question is known as secure socket layers. Textmimedia are able to supply for your website a number of different types of secure socket layer certificate including extended validation certificates that let your clients browsers change to highlight the address bar in green reassuring that your website is genuine and in the case of e-commerce sites they will increase conversion over sites that do not support this technology.

Random Password Generation

Write down on a note pad what your age, date of birth, number of your house or flat, and your mothers madien name and first pets name. Next to these write down every password you currently use, take a circle around the phrases on the left and match it to the right. If you are like 99% of the rest of the world, you just highlighted a good portion of your passwords from things that are easily available to people who know you and they do not need to know you overly well to get that information either.

Secure passwords should be long, contain lower case and upper case characters, numbers and non alphanumeric characters for example:

LJz2£TW76YBq_ctdjU$J(vBER)-Z

Consider using a random password generator to help you here.

Firewall

As a Cisco Partner, Textmimedia is proud to be a supplier of industrial grade firewalls which you might be surprised can be purchased from us for as little as a few pounds per day. These high grade firewalls can be configured and managed for you, or you can let your in house IT team do this for you. Contact us today for more advice on how we can further secure your network.

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