Network security is a broad term used to describe the protection of all computing resources from availability, confidentiality, and integrity attacks and failures. This involves anti-malware, firewalls, intrusion detection, data loss prevention technology, and other protections.
Network security is vital for protecting client data, defending against emerging threats and ensuring operational efficiency. Below are some of the key benefits of implementing a robust Network Security Solution:
Network security helps organizations safeguard sensitive information, such as financial records, customer data, and intellectual property, from unauthorized access and misuse:
Encrypting data in transit and at rest, ensuring it remains unreadable to unauthorized parties.
Implementing access controls to ensure sensitive data is accessed only by legitimate users.
Detecting and preventing unauthorized data access attempts through firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS).
Effective network security measures shield organizations from a wide range of cyber threats, reducing the risk of disruptions and damage caused by attacks:
Identifying and blocking malicious traffic before it enters the network.
Monitoring for abnormal activities or vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers.
Employing multi-layered defenses such as firewalls, endpoint security, and anti-malware solutions.
For organizations operating under strict data protection laws, network security ensures compliance and minimizes the risk of legal penalties:
Providing tools to safeguard data in accordance with industry regulations.
Logging and auditing activities to demonstrate adherence to compliance requirements.
Maintaining robust access control and encryption practices to meet legal obligations.
Network security reduces the likelihood of cyber incidents that disrupt operations, ensuring organizations can maintain productivity and continue to build trust with their customers and stakeholders:
Detecting and mitigating threats before they escalate into larger incidents.
Implementing redundancy and disaster recovery measures to minimize downtime.
Preserving the integrity of systems and ensuring reliable access to resources for employees and customers alike.
Network security involves specific protective controls that are added to a network. These controls have evolved over the years and will continue to grow as we learn more about how to defend a network, and as hackers learn new ways to attack.
To ensure that you have the best controls added for protection, it is necessary to first understand the threat landscape and network vulnerabilities. It is also important to understand what types of controls are available so you can apply the correct vendors, solutions, and configurations to your network.
Threats are potential violations that affect resource confidentially, availability, or integrity. Threats can include sensitive data disclosure, data alteration, or even denial of access to a service.
For a threat to be realized, there must be an exploitable vulnerability. A vulnerability is a weakness or flaw that threat actors can use to violate security policies.
Confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) are the main attributes that define the goal of any information security process. There are many strategies and activities involved in the process, and each falls under one of three phases: prevention, detection, and response.
It is important to understand critical concepts in network security. If you, a good guy, are not aware of vulnerabilities and threat actors, you won’t know the best security controls to put in place. An example is understanding that the identity of the user needs to be verified before accessing the system. This is essential knowledge that enables you to identify the correct vendor and solution.
Access control is a type of security control that almost everyone is familiar with. Most people these days have used a password to log into a computer, possibly as recently as a few minutes ago.
Access control implementation is broken down into four parts: identification, authentication, authorization, and accounting (IAAA). This process confirms the user’s identity through a unique identifier such as a user ID, username, or account number.
Network segmentation is dividing a network into smaller logical parts so controls can be added in between. This enhances performance and improves security. Virtual local area networks (VLANs) are a common network segmentation method performed both on-prem or using cloud infrastructure. When used for the cloud, they are called virtual private clouds (VPCs).
Traditional networking within a physical data center had a clearly-defined perimeter. It was the point where the data center had a connection to the outside world. Today, perimeters are harder to define, but we still use a lot of the same technology.
Encryption ensures the confidentiality and integrity of data in transit or at rest by converting it into cypher using a key. Symmetric and asymmetric cryptography are the two basic types of encryption.
People, operations, and technology are the main elements that contribute to defense-in-depth network security. Once you identify and assess risks that threaten your business, you can determine your network security needs. This includes the type of technology you need to employ for perimeter security, responses to alerts generated from firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, and logs. Let's start with firewalls.
Firewalls are a very traditional security measure that have been added to networks and end systems for over 25 years. For a firewall, traffic goes into one of two categories: desirable traffic to pass through, and undesirable traffic to block. Packet filter was one of the first firewalls that filtered out unwanted traffic.
Unlike firewalls, an intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS) monitors the network for malicious activity, reporting and responding to network security incidents and potential threats. A firewall looks for desired traffic and blocks the rest.
A virtual private network (VPN) protects the confidentiality of data as it traverses your network. VPN’s core is encryption, although it also uses authentication.
When your company has content, books, manuals, etc. that you wish to share with your customers in a controlled manner, digital rights management (DRM) is the solution. DRM software is familiar to most people with a computer today.
DLP tools watch for traffic that should not leave a business, which would be a leak, and stop that transmission. At least that is the idea. DLP is very difficult to configure properly, but it is worth looking into to protect your company from accidental data leaks.
The most important control to add to all businesses is monitoring. It is important to watch for attacks, threats, breaches, hackers, etc. In security, it is best to assume that your business will get hacked, and that users will make mistakes.
Advancing security from data centers to cloud workloads, applications, and cloud-native architectures, Cloud Security provides platform-based protection, risk management, and multi-cloud detection and response.