Doing What’s Right to Protect Your Network

The protection of personal data, software, and hardware is the essential goal of network security. Individuals and organizations must develop and maintain effective measures to maintain operability and protect information within computers and networks. I am pursuing a bachelor of science in cyber and data security technology so that I can help save people and organizations' privacy and livelihoods.

Until recent years, network security had not been as vital as it is today. Computers were not networked before 1980 due to the lack of technology. Back then, serial ports utilizing RS-232 protocols allowed users to interface with the mainframe through physically connected terminals to ports. Systems were utterly vulnerable because they were wide open; security was not considered necessary due to an emphasis on ease of connectivity and access. Nowadays, a single network circuit can deliver thousands of connections, and it is imperative to implement preventative measures that can prevent a security breach.

Network security is compromised on a foundation of prevention, detection, and response—the use of security policies and measures by which an individual or organization develops and deploys, prevents exploitation of vulnerabilities and deters potential attackers. Many techniques, devices, and technologies provide rules and configurations to identify problems to protect a system's network and data. Individuals and organizations have different determined levels of security that are individually adequate for them. Information security is considered all of the following: integrity, confidentiality, authentication, and availability. Simple policies and procedures that protect information security are data integrity, backups—disaster recovery, configuration, and media controls.

The cost-benefit analysis of a compromised network can determine how much one should invest in security safeguards. The cost to implement network security measures can be based on the risk and impact of lost data and information. Three approaches mainly used in network security are defense-in-depth, obscurity, and perimeter defense. Perimeter defense uses firewalls to protect against untrusted networks and cannot protect against an internal attack. A defense-in-depth requires a combination of all network administrators to harden and monitor all systems. With this model, an internal network system is better equipped to defend against a compromised external system like a modem and better protection against an internal attack. The concept of security by obscurity is in stealth protection. By hiding a network or system, the ability to be attacked is decreased. Although, if detected, the network or system is entirely vulnerable.

Some software and hardware, though design flaws, can allow a system to become vulnerable and hacked. Once a hacker gains access, a local exploit increases the privileges of the intruder to a system's network. Another form of exploitation is a computer worm which is self-contained and replicated. A computer can become easily infected by a virus with the opening of an email attachment. Some computers can recover within a few days or weeks but most never recover.

 A combination of multiple layers of defense can protect a network's security. These layers allow authorized users to access the network and block malicious threats. The risk of being hacked or attacked is reduced by implementing simple and basic procedures: replace outdated computer systems, keep firewalls on, update all devices to the latest and available firmware, add spam filters and antivirus/antimalware software, use hacker-proof passwords and multi-factor authentication, use a virtual private network, limited access control, wireless security, backup regularly, and have a disaster recovery plan.  

All lives will be affected by the evolving and continued growth of information technology. Network security is vital due to the increasing interdependency of the internet and software. One can become overwhelmed and think that network security is not possible, but by implementing basic security measures, a computer's network system can be better protected against potential malicious attacks.