Attacks against IT network infrastructures are becoming increasingly sophisticated and the type of threats used are constantly evolving. The effort involved in protecting your organisations network and data can be overwhelming and it doesn't just stop at virus or malware infections either, today organisations need to protect from the perimeter right through to the desktop or endpoint.
Organisations need to protect themselves from external threats, prevention against these types of threats start at the perimeter. Guarding your network with a firewall significantly reduces exposure to direct external attacks, using virtual private networks (VPN) to allow users remote access reduces risk, using de-militarised zones (DMZ) to provide web services to customers, partners or the public segregates the network.
Content filtering helps protect against threats that use email or web pages as transport. Viruses, malware and trojans can infect simply by opening an email or web page without any indication that anything has occured. Preventing users from accessing web pages deemed unecessary or not in accordance with an organisations internet usage policy or blocking an infected email at the perimeter can reduce this risk.
These days internal threats are just as likely to pose a significant security issue, do the right users have access to confidential data. Are user accounts setup correctly allowing the user to complete day-to-day activities whilst restricted enough to prevent the user from bypassing security enforcement. There are new issues to contend with for example using social networking sites to post information that regards your organisations or it's employees.
