Are You Really Secure?
Network Security Problems Businesses Dread

Among the security risks faced by today’s businesses are disgruntled employees, fired employees, clueless employees who succumb to social engineering, passwords left on Post-it notes, wide-open instant messaging and increasingly powerful hacker tools in the hands of teenagers. Some of the biggest headaches for companies include:

Insider Abuse
Current and former employees and on-site contractors with authorized access to facilities and networks continue to pose the most significant risk to intellectual property such as research data, customer files and financial information.

Social Engineering
The malevolent person attempting to get information (or access) preys upon the good, helpful nature of unknowing and unsuspecting employees. Computer users' gullibility or lack of security awareness often helps an attacker bypass security barriers like firewalls or intrusion-detection systems.

Email Virus Attacks
Keeping antivirus software up to date is critically important for all platforms, but the key is educating employees about safe computing practices and enforcing policies to safeguard the network.

Operating System Vulnerability
Over half of security break-ins are the result of operating systems that are not configured properly, verified and monitored regularly. Operating systems provisioned out of the box at the default security settings are highly vulnerable to attack.

Loss of Confidential Data
Laptops, PDAs, portable hard disks, data backups on CD and other mobile devices with sensitive company data are lost and never recovered. A lack of knowledge about where confidential business data resides on the network, coupled with insufficient controls over data stores pose a serious threat.

Privacy Violation
Federal and state regulations and international laws have pushed data privacy management to the top of the business agenda. Companies that fail to comply with those laws will increasingly be exposing themselves to legal liability from their customers and from regulators.

Wireless LAN Security Breach
Rogue access points, insecure configurations and accidental associations to neighboring WLANs are among internal vulnerabilities. External threats like eavesdropping and espionage, identity theft and other attacks, such as denial-of-service may menace even the most secure WLANs.

Network Attack
A company with a perimeter connection to the Internet could very well be under attack at any moment. When was the last time your network was tested? Intrusion detection and prevention systems are more important now than ever.

Stop for a moment to identify the three biggest security risks your company faces -- whatever would bring your company to its knees. Is it theft of credit card numbers? Embezzlement? Privacy violations?

Be sure to address those high-risk areas first, before looking at more exotic problems. Take care of the basics: passwords, patches, employee training, antivirus software and access controls. If you can't keep up, consider outsourcing Pickering & Associates, Inc.

Technology is a small part of the security solution. People are the big part.

Compiled from a variety of Internet Sources