What is Network Security?
A network security system uses both hardware and software to protect networking infrastructure from unauthorized access, malfunctions, misuse, and breaches of confidentiality.
Network Protection Methods
There is a range of network security methods to ensure strong defense mechanisms.
Access control: This is to restrict or terminate illegitimate devices from accessing the organization's network. The users who are allowed to have permitted access to the network are also authorized to have access to a specific set of resources.
Anti-Malware: Malware, such as computer worms, viruses, and trojans, aims to infect network systems and can persist on infected machines for varying durations, not limited to weeks. The security system should enforce features and techniques to prevent infection and remove malware instantly.
Application security: Not all applications are genuine and malware-free. Attackers use malicious and insecure applications as bait to gain access to the organizations' network. So you would need an efficient integration of software, hardware, and security processes to restrict suspicious apps.
Behavioral Analytics: Analysing a network to understand its normal behavior is important. This would help you spot if the network is going through any abnormal behavior and hence work on any responsive protective methods.
Data loss prevention: It is vital to implement methods and techniques that restrict employees and other users from purposefully or inadvertently sending confidential data outside the organization's network.
Email Security: Attackers use phishing emails to gain access to the network. Email security methods should be implemented to enable protection from such phishing emails.
Firewall: It uses a set of defined rules to control incoming and outgoing network traffic based on security levels. Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDPS): These systems scan network traffic to identify and mitigate attacks.
Network segmentation: A software-related segmentation would help you to organize different categories and therefore implementing security policies becomes easier.
Web Security: This manages internal staff web use in order to terminate web-based attacks from exploiting potential browsers as a vector to gain access to your network.
IT Network Security and the Cloud
In transitioning from on-premises to cloud computing, a comprehensive network protection strategy should blend both on-premises and cloud-based security measures to manage access, protect data, and secure the cloud, endpoints, and network infrastructure. However, for a complete cloud-based network security platform, a secure web gateway is an essential component. It delivers a robust ecosystem of techniques all integrated to function together to deliver complete protection over the cloud. It blocks and investigates the traffic between the internet and the users and classifies all the URLs so that any suspicious pages and websites are detected and blocked, while good URLs are allowed access depending on the needs of the organization. The Secure Web Gateway acts as an elimination point as it leads into several layers of investigation for next-gen advanced threat protection. A Secure Web Gateway can be deployed in the cloud, on-premises, or within a hybrid environment, adapting to various network configurations.
Fundamentals of Network Protection
Here are five fundamentals to ensure network protection
- Maintain the latest patch updates
- Use of complex and strong passwords
- Secure your VPN
- Pro-active measures to control and manage user access privileges
- Remove or eliminate inactive accounts