You’ve done, what a lot of people believe, are the major actions towards creating a secure network. This is only partially accurate. What about the other aspects of your network security policy?

Social Engineering Attacks?

Have you thought about a social engineering attack? What about the people who make use of your network daily? Are you prepared in managing attacks by these people?

Consider it or not, the weakest link in your security plan often is the folks who use your network. For the most part, users are untrained to the strategies to spot and defuse a social engineering attack. What’s likely to prevent a user from discovering a compact disk or DVD within the lunch room and taking it to their workstation and opening the files? This CD may possibly hold a table or word processor file that includes a malicious macro embedded inside it. The next thing you know, your system is compromised by network security threats.

This predicament exists predominantly in an atmosphere where a help desk staff resets passwords over the telephone. There is certainly nothing to prevent anyone intent on breaking into your system from calling the help desk, pretending to be an employee, and requesting to get a password reset. Nearly all organizations use a system to come up with usernames, thus it is not exceptionally complicated to figure them out.

Are Your Network Security Policies Strict Enough?

Your company must have strict policies constantly in place to validate the uniqueness of the user prior to a password reset may be made. One uncomplicated thing to complete is to get an individual to visit the help desk in the flesh. The other method, that works well in case your offices are geographically far away, should be to designate an individual contact in the workplace who can phone to get a password reset. This way every person who works on the help desk can be on familiar terms with the tone of voice of this individual and realize that the individual is who they assert they are.

Why would an aggressor go to your office or place a phone call to the help desk? Easy, it is often the path of least resistance. There isn’t a necessity to spend time attempting to break into an digital system when the physical system is less complicated to exploit. The next occasion you see someone move through the entry after you, and you do not recognize them, stop and inquire who they are and what they really are there for. If you ever do this, but it transpires that they are someone who is just not supposed to be there, more often than not he’ll get away as prompt as possible. If whomever is supposed to be there then he’ll most likely have the ability to supply the name of whomever he’s there to see.

So What Does This All Mean?

I do know some of you may think that I am crazy, right? Well consider Kevin Mitnick. He’s one of the most decorated hackers in history. The United States government thought he could whistle tones into a phone and launch a nuclear assault. Nearly all of his hacking was done through social engineering. Whether he did it through physical visits to workplaces or by making a phone call, he executed several of the best hacks to date. If you need to understand more about him search his name on the web or read the two publications he has written.

It’s beyond me why people try to dismiss these kind of approaches. I guess some network engineers are simply too proud of their set-up to declare that they could be breached so easily. Or is it the fact that people don’t feel they should be critical to educating their personnel? Another reason is that most organizations don’t offer their IT departments the control in promoting physical security as part of their network security policy. This is generally a problem for the building administrator or services administration. None the less, if you can actually educate the employees the slightest bit; you may be able to avoid a network breach from a physical or social engineering attack.

Network Security Policy – Physical and Social Engineering Attacks is from Network Security Threats

If you are thinking of going to any kind of budget meeting where you ask for some money to run a network security audit you need to have some answers ready for these questions.

A network security audit, just means someone comes and checks the security of your computer network. These checks can vary from being just computer based right through to including a on site evaluation of the physical security of your company network. Network security threats come in all different shapes forms and styles so it really does make sense to call in the experts.

When the question of “how will a network security audit help us?” is bought up I always ask people if they ever have their car serviced or do they just wait till it breaks down on the road to an important meeting to get that funny noise looked at.

Having a Network security audit done is like servicing for your network, but instead of fixing a small oil leak, it stops a huge information, profit and business leak.

Since we have an IT dept why do we need to get someone else in from the outside to do a network security audit?

This is another common question when you are trying to get budgetary approval for a network security audit, the answer is that you need specialists for each job. You wouldn’t expect the guy who sells pet food to be able to fix your roof as efficiently as someone who has spent many years learning all there is to know about roofs.

Computers are exactly the same, there are people who specialize in setting up websites, people who specialize in keeping servers running and people who do nothing but run network security audits all week. They also fix the problems they find of course.

Paying for a network security audit may seem like an added expense that your company doesn’t need in this tough economic climate but try and work out a cost for one day of total down time should your pc’s be infected with some nasty virus.

How much would it cost your company in man hours, lost business and goodwill if your whole computer network was compromised?

While it doesn’t pay to be too much of a scaremonger, network security isn’t something that should be taken lightly by anyone. Sadly enough network security audits are only considered to be worth investing in by some companies after they have already had a catastrophic computer failure.

There is a old expression in England, Penny Wise and Pound Foolish, this is especially apt in the world of computers. You may save some money by not paying for a network security audit, but that saving will pale into nothing when you consider the loss if you don’t get a professional company in to run a network security audit today.

What Is A Network Security Audit ? is from Network Security Threats

In order to protect our computers from the network security threats that it is exposed to, we need to first understand the different types of threats that exist, only then we will be able to safeguard our computer. The most common kind of network security threats that computers are exposed to, are the threat of “Viruses”. It is important to know that a virus is usually sent as a downloadable attachment which is in the form of an executable file. Once a person downloads a file and runs it, that’s when the problem starts. The moment the executable file is “run” the computer gets affected by the network security threats and a virus has now been downloaded by the user.

The function of the virus is usually related to corrupting the files which are on the system; this could be the software related file or the actual hardware itself. There are certain viruses which are less harmful and affect only certain types of software which are on the computer. However there are many software’s which completely rash the hardware of the computer the moment that they are downloaded and executed. Such viruses are listed as the top most computer network security threats.

When we talk about the network security threats that are posed by the different kinds of viruses, it is important to understand that there are computer programs called “worms” which are basically subsets of viruses and can cause massive amount of damage to your computer system. There are certain network security threats and bugs which only cause the computer screen to have annoying pop-ups every now and then; however some of the more deadly bugs cause permanent damage to the software installed. There have been cases where “worms” have affected the computer in such a way that the computer started automatically sending e-mails to all the addresses which are listed in the computer. The most dangerous part about worms is that they don’t need to be in an executable format which needs to be run.

People often store their personal information on their computers because most of us take care of our bill payments, bank account transactions, and other important things through our computers. Imagining the magnitude of the problem which can arise if your computer is hacked or crash can be a scary thought. It is better that all of us secure our computers by installing good anti-virus software which can safeguard our computers from the excessive computer network security threats.

While there are several free systems that you can use online that will safeguard your computer, they are often times not as effective as the paid versions of network security threats software. They are usually very limited and will not completely eliminate the network security threats such as the viruses and worms that your computer is prone to getting if it was not protected. It is extremely important that you choose a software wisely that is easy to install and will allow you to scan your computer for network security threats as often as you would like.

Network Security Threats Explained is from Network Security Threats