Security is a multifaceted issue that must be addressed to avoid abuse of your network from hackers and employees. While you are connected to the Internet your network is open to the public unless it is protected by a firewall. Networks that are connected to the Internet are vulnerable to malicious attacks from hackers and virus infection. A well configured firewall will block uninvited visitors whilst allowing remote access to authorised users and services. Many firewalls now offer a host of other advanced features such as gateway antivirus, spam filtering, content filtering and the ability to block specific applications such as instant messaging to add further protection and restrict how the Internet is used within the office. Internally, sensitive information such as personnel records, management reports and accounts data can be protected by configuring permissions that only allow access for those who are authorised. Passwords to access the network should be changed on a regular basis and should be sufficiently complex that they cannot be compromised. We can advise on all aspects of network security, firewalls, virus protection and implement a security policy to protect your data and systems.
1. Combined attacks Combined attacks – those predicated across a convergence of different attack methods – will be a major threat according to Robin Hollington, director of Comsec Consulting. Combinations of malicious code, Phishing, Spam and other online attacks are on the rise, and will soon be “running rampant”. Spam already reaches a record 89% of email messages; Trojans comprise nearly 80% of malware, and hundreds of thousands of zombies and malicious websites now appear on a daily basis – and it’s still on the up. 2. Deperimeterisation (we’re not sure but we think that’s pronounced, er, dee-perrim-itt-er-eye-zay-shun) Both threat and necessity, deperimeterisation can be loosely described as the breaking down and blurring between traditional technology perimeters such as networks, applications, and physical security. With traditional IT boundaries shifting and becoming more and more business-driven and determined based on strategic decisions, network perimeters need to be permeable and flexible but also secure. This will demand the adoption of multiple layers of security – a logistical and financial burden that, for some, will be a threat in itself. 3. Phishing –the net widens Techniques for the fraudulent acquisition of sensitive data like usernames, passwords and credit card information via online ‘impersonation’ will continue to rise in both sophistication and prevalence. For Phishing, see ‘Spearphishing’ and ‘Whaling’ – new methods which typically target particular companies, organisations, groups, or government agencies (and sometimes groups of high-level executives within such organisations or multiple organisations). Comsec describes such attacks as “the driving force behind combined attacks” (see 1.) 4. Malware From the nasty little applets that pop up gambling websites when you open your web browser to clever key-loggers, malware has become incredibly sophisticated in recent years and will continue to be developed as long as users transact over the Internet, says Steve Smith UK MD of risk management service provider Pentura. Moreover, the threat is sure to increase with the rise and spread of the dreaded botnet (groups of self-perpetuating and replicating malware infected clients). 5. VoIP (Vulnerability over IP) Voice over IP carries with it a number of natural vulnerabilities and risks such as registration hijacking, server impersonation, and message body exploitation, along with IP phone hijacking, accounting data modification, phone-based DDos, identity theft, session hijacking, insertion of content (e.g. .wav files), and others. On a positive note, as VoIP technology has become more mainstream and widely adopted so too has the knowledge and practice of information security for VoIP platforms. 6. Black market values Stolen credit cards, identities, online payment and bank account details are now among the commodities most frequently offered for sale on underground economy servers. And email passwords now sell for almost as much as bank accounts. Along with the rise in BotNet, DoS (Denial of Service), Identity Theft, and DNS Dynamic attacks – this creates a whole new playing field in information security. 7. Wireless networks Despite continuing publicity about the threat of unguarded wireless networks and data theft, people still don’t seem to get it, says Pentura’s Steve Smith. “Until positive action is taken it is still a real security risk, and burying your head in the sand and saying “We don’t have wireless here” won’t make the problem go away.” 8. JavaScript attacks “Since JavaScript is the most-used scripting language for communication with web browsers, third-party applications such as Flash player, PDF readers and other multimedia applications now support JavaScript”, comments Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CTO of Finjan. “This offers crimeware authors the opportunity to inject malicious code into the rich-content files used by online ads and user-generated content on Web 2.0 websites – which are becoming more popular in directing users to malwareinfected content files. In Finjan’s H1/2008 Web Security Survey 46% of respondents stated that their organisations didn’t have Web 2.0 security policies in place. 9. Web application security The Web application threat is no longer limited simply to online shopping menaces and now goes way beyond such issues, says Smith. All manner of applications are now accessed via web browsers – from social networking and rich content sites to online mail and CRM solutions – and as more and more sensitive information is held and accessed in this way, hackers are certain to see gains in crafting attacks to steal or corrupt it. 10. Improper IT disposal and data wiping Data-laden hard drives, full memory sticks, old routers with valid VPN credentials – all these and more have ended up in the wrong hands, warns Aaron Day, operations director with IT disposal specialists TransIT. “Proper IT disposal is now essential from a legal standpoint, but it’s vital to consider security too. With careless data practice being exposed in the media on virtually a weekly basis now, the targeted acquisition of old kit could soon become a mainstream tactic among the e-criminal fraternity.” 11. The unexpected vector Contractors and trusted third parties will likely have access to some or all of a business’s data, while managed service providers will probably be able to connect to certain critical systems for support purposes. While such connections may well be unavoidable, having knowledge of them and understanding what your risks are is something that very few organisations truly have, says Pentura’s Steve Smith. “You might think you have, but you probably haven’t.” 12. Users The “squidgy pink bit” behind the keyboard is something we’ll never get rid of. So education and awareness must continue; from giving users advice on keeping their passwords safe and uncrackable, to showing administrators how to configure their systems securely and issuing timely warnings about phishing attacks. Security still needs more focus and education. Discuss Security Threats on our Forum A leading global single source provider of IT products and services From competitively priced computers, hardware and software to services ranging from basic configuration to advanced design implementation and financing, we solve the IT needs of businesses and organisations of all sizes. http://iq.insight.com
Each entry point of the internet to the internal network must be protected by the firewall. The external firewall which faces direct to the Internet must be configured by default to deny all traffic not specifically permitted by the firewall security policy. This is to ensure that maximum network security is enforced against all un-trusted and unauthorized networks and in order to protect against Internet based attacks. A Firewall can, if effectively deployed and maintained, limit the risk to an internal network of exploitation of vulnerabilities in the TCP/IP protocol suite by external parties. This is achieved by filtering the network traffic and preventing known harmful traffic from reaching the trusted network. Evasive methods of delivering exploits continue to increase and the problem is further compounded by the growing number of application and OS vulnerabilities, as well as the increasing speed with which new attacks are created to exploit these vulnerabilities. Network security products such as Firewalls with the capabilities of preventing in-line network intruders are required. Consider the Juniper Networks IDP Series Intrusion Detection and Prevention Appliances. Product Description Unwanted network and application-level attacks always inflict any damage into the networks and causing the cost overhead associated with the recovery effort. With Juniper IDP network security product, you can assure that the product will stop them before they cause the damage. Juniper IDP is powered by industry-recognized Stateful detection and prevention techniques to provide zero-day protection against worms, Trojans, spyware, key loggers, and other malware from penetrating the network or spreading from already infected users. Juniper IDP network security product can provide information on rogue servers, as well as types and versions of applications and operating systems that may have unknowingly been added to the network. Juniper IDP network security product series contain application signatures which go a step further by enabling accurate detection and reporting of volume used by applications such as instant messaging, social networking, or peer-to-peer. Juniper IDP have the knowledge of specific applications running in the network to allow you use application policy enforcement rules to easily manage these applications by limiting bandwidth, restricting their use, or prioritizing them lower with DiffServ marking. You can ensure that business-critical applications receive a predictable quality of service (QoS) while enforcing security policies to maintain compliance with corporate application usage policies. Features and Benefits Application awareness/identification Juniper IDP network security product series include the use of context, protocol information, and signatures to identify applications on any port. You can also enable rules and policies based on application traffic rather than ports that will help you protect or police standard applications on non-standard ports. Protocol decodes Juniper IDP series support more than 60 protocol decodes along with more than 500 contexts to enforce proper usage of protocols. With protocol decodes, the accuracy of signatures is improved through precise context of protocols. Predefined and custom signatures More than 6,200 predefined signatures are included for identifying anomalies, attacks, spyware, and applications. Customization of signatures to personalize the attack database is allowed. This will allow you identify the attacks accurately and detect any attempts at exploiting a known vulnerability. Traffic interpretation Juniper IDP series provide reassembly, normalization, and protocol decoding to help overcome attempts to bypass other IDP Series detections by using obfuscation methods. Application Volume Tracking (AVT) AVT helps you to track and collect volumetric application usage information to create proper application policies based on observed network bandwidth consumption by application. Zero-day protection Juniper IDP provides Protocol anomaly detection and same-day coverage for newly found vulnerabilities to protect your networks against any new exploits. IDP Series Intrusion Detection and Prevention Appliances are managed by Juniper Networks Network and Security Manager, a centralized, rule-based management solution offering granular control over the system’s behavior. NSM also provides easy access to extensive logging, fully customizable reporting, and management of all Juniper Networks firewall/VPN/IDP Series appliances from a single user interface. With the combination of highest security coverage, granular network control, and visibility and centralized management, the IDP Series is the best solution to keep critical information assets safe. By Ki Grinsing Ki Grinsing was graduated from a technical college with the additions of MCSE and CCNA certifications and prolonged years of working experiences in IT. Please visit related articles: network security product and internet security system
Made in collaboration with Fortinet, the market leader in UTM applications, Secure Box is the answer to market demand for business to comply with recent regulations of the Consolidated Statement of Privacy. The firewall, intrusion prevention on, antivirus and antispam, content filtering for web browsing, VPN and more, they are provided a solution to the state of the art.Secure Box is a service consists of:A control center for the management and careCertified personnel with specific expertise on computer securityA UTM appliance loadable installed at the customer siteSecure Box supports the System Administrator in the performance of legal obligations, but it is a solution that can bring other benefits: It reduces internet bandwidth used (traffic shaping) and optimizes the work (web filtering)It is an anti-virus software updated in real time to all client computer WindowssicurezzaA UTM appliance loadable installed at the customer siteOne of the most important features of the Secure Box is the possibility to create log and report on any activities of the network:is an essential tool to maintain the effectiveness of their policies, to analyze the situation of vulnerability or security incidents, to monitor the use of resources and decide on a better schedule. All inclusive is the watchword of the Secure Box:Contrary to what happens in similar deals in the market, the proposed model is not based on licensing but it is all-inclusive. Furthermore, with the signing of specific subscriptions already included in all contracts, the services of antivirus, antispam, Web filtering and IPS are updated every day more than. Databases Interactive Network is the service that has made Ribes spa to enable real-time access via the Internet to the vast wealth of information held by the Italian Chambers of Commerce.Through a simple Web interface to navigate in the Commercial Register of the Chambers of Commerce to carry out research on: companiespeopleprotestsBudgetsofficial acts Interactive offers the opportunity to get SSL / TLS signed and guaranteed by the leading Certification Authority, so as to ensure the identity of visitors to its website. An SSL certificate is needed to offer services such as e-commerce, online banking, encryption of HTTP or otherwise in all cases where the security and confidentiality of information are crucial. Resource: http://www.interactive.eu
Today, when the OS 4 for the iPhone family is about to be released, the most lively discussed thing is its multi-tasking. However, there hasn’t been much discussion on the importance of multi-tasking to the ordinary user, yet there are many questions on this topic, like whether it will be found useful for the company willing to safely integrate the iPhone family into its network. Besides, will this multi-tasking feature affect the carrier dearly reclaiming the biggest part of the abused bandwidth of the last mile, stacked with 90% junk email? To start with, the iPhone already features multi-task, so it’s not such a new feature in fact. It’s already able to listen for incoming texts and phone calls, while letting music to be played with awaiting updates. The current version of the iPhone OS uses preemptively multitasking Mach/BSD kernel, exactly the same as Apple’s desktop Mac OS X. Meanwhile, consumers see multi-tasking as the ability to run more than one third-party program simultaneously like on desktops and laptops. Actually, extensive multi-tasking is an essential even from the conventional security point of view, let alone the users’ convenience. That is not the talk about the security of the external look of the device – that’s what iPhone 4 case can do for you. That’s about the software security. Think of it: each time you create a Word document or something, there’s a large number of security processes in the background, consuming the valuable power, and, of course, sharing the CPU resources and memory. At the very least, anti-virus software, along with anti-spam, should run constantly, at the same time as the VPN and personal firewall help to secure the device completely. The individual consumers and companies usually run various versions of security software of different brands to keep the highest rate of hostile code and activities detection. At the same time the user is busy with typing, listening, or downloading rich content. So, it comes essential for tens of millions users of Apple’s iPhone to have multi-tasking in the OS 4, because it seems to be critical just from a security point. However, it’s just a false feeling and actually doesn’t matter. Apple could do the same as Android and Windows Mobile that allow any type of application to run whenever the user wants it to, facing the same pack of conflict problems and system performance that were discovered on the ordinary PCs. As soon as Apple’s A4 processor has up to 4 cores, OS 4 would be able to separate the internal system processes from the others on one core while using the others to manage third party software. One more potential look on OS 4 may consider multi-tasking allowing one third-party application, for example, native Safari and mail running simultaneously, while permitting two, three, or whatever number of Apple proprietary applications running, managed by a kind of Command-Shift to switch between them. In fact, the definition of multi-tasking is not “running as many applications as the user wants.” On the contrary, creating rational restrictions to keep user’s experience positive is one certain approach for the mobile OS developers. So what would happen to security in this case? Actually, smart phones are only small computers, and are therefore subject to the same weaknesses as of the ordinary PC, letting alone jail broken iPhones. By the way, the smaller devices win in the design and look, because you won’t able to put a colorful iPhone 4 cover on your Mac to raise your mood. But if we go back to the software problems and imagine that Apple would select to let an unrestricted number of security applications to run simultaneously (multi-task), then it would imitate the state of security where the user is the responsible one for managing them all. Besides, each security application would be loaded onto and run from the endpoint. However, one should agree that although the individual consumers need security and companies require it for compliance, such unrestricted approach to security (even in OS 4 environment) faces several questions: 1. How long will the battery live, even that of the iPad, with numerous security applications being loaded and run constantly? 2. How big is the share of processing power and storage that will be required to ensure the highest level of security? 3. Considering preemptive multi-task, which of the processes will take priority over the others, especially if they are able to affect both security and performance? 4. Assuming that the security should be running at all the times, will the users have to launch all the security services every single time they turn their device on? If compared with OS X, the consumers there are able to select applications launched automatically at the start in “login items”, and this feature undoubtedly demands a broad method of multi-tasking. 5. What skills and knowledge will the consumer need to acquire to be able to find, install, configure and control countless security applications? 6. While using time-based security balance, how will the use of a smart phone endpoint, as compared to the cloud, affect the last mile performance in terms of handling richer content and security? 7. What should user do when turning his phone off for the night to turn it back on in the morning? Assume that the consumer is only intended to check the email, but will have to wait while the multi-tasking iPhone finishes performing a series of security actions first. 8. Remembering that the resources of iPhone are more limited than those of an ordinary PC, how often do security signatures, profiles, and alerts need to be updated? Since Apple’s approach depends on available intelligence, it seems that it is going to serve the user experience like that in Expose, which allows them to switch easier between the running applications. However, it’s not quite clear if it means that the consumer will be able to watch video on YouTube and then quickly enough to switch over to email, favoring it by essentially pausing YouTube. You could argue it’s multi-tasking that kernel manages. But, nevertheless, this approach still won’t allow to implement the traditional ways of securing the device. And it doesn’t matter which of the multi-tasking approach will be chosen to be introduced into iPhone OS 4 or beyond, if it fails to tackle the security problems with conventional methods. No matter if it is iPhone running OS 3 or 4, or even X, or the multi-tasking Symbian or Android, since it’s clear enough that consumers shouldn’t rely on the phone vendor for security, just as nobody thinks it to be the PC vendor’s concern for the entire period of digital century. In fact, securing all current and future versions of foreseeable mobile technology will only mean a creation of a really integrated secure smart phone framework and architecture that is able to work in the cloud. So, if we look from a security point, it doesn’t actually matter what way Apple will choose to design multi-tasking for the OS 4. Since the user experience is a priority, we can guess that most of the consumers don’t dream about putting the security at the top of the list of what they want to do in the morning. Just imagine what can happen in couple years when over 2 billion mobile users chose to secure their device only with case for iPhone 4, but not with useful aplications? Shall we find it out?
