Every organisation wants to keep their corporate networks safe. We asked Frank Dickson from Frost and Sullivan for his top three tips for securing your network.
Network lock image from Shutterstock.
Basic Hygiene
“Basic hygiene – patch and maintain. If you think about the number of hacks, approximately three-quarters of all hacks are because systems aren’t updated or patched. It’s not sexy but it’s basic,” says Dickson.
Authentication
Dickson told us there needs to be close attention paid to the validity of authentication and the use of strong technology to prevent theft and spoofing of user accounts.
“Let’s do two-factor, let’s do some kind of USB key, some kind of device fingerprinting – something to improve the level of authentication”.
Keep it simple
Here’s a recipe for disaster. Dickson told us of a client that was using 85 different security tools from 45 different vendors. Getting those to all interoperate was incredibly difficult and made life very difficult for the security team.
“Instead of getting the best intrusion prevention system (IPS) or the best firewall or the best antivirus, think about how to bring security controls together and link them and make them easier to utilise and maintain,” says Dickson
Anthony Caruana attended Intel FOCUS 15 in Las Vegas as a guest of Intel Australia
Comments
One response to “Top Three Things You Need To Do To Secure Your Network”
I always thought the best defence was awareness and education.
Most compromised systems I’ve come across have been because of user ignorance, or other user based mistake, with the software only getting onto the system because they did something. The only two serious virus problems I’ve ever had was through an ignorant flatmate installing something he shouldnt. Awareness and AVG free has done the rest.
If you understand the risks, and only go through trusted sources, you can avoid enough of the drama’s that even the most basic virus protection will catch the rest. That flatmate got educated quickly enough.