{"id":679,"date":"2005-06-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/2005\/06\/06\/dirt-cheap-network-security\/"},"modified":"2021-12-30T11:37:56","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T11:37:56","slug":"dirt-cheap-network-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/2005\/06\/06\/dirt-cheap-network-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Dirt Cheap Network Security"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Throwing money at security vulnerabilities may not make you safer at all.  You&#8217;ve spent money on hardware and software firewalls, security appliances, anti-virus software, anti-spyware&#8230;the list of what you&#8217;ve bought can go on and on.  To be sure, any organization that doesn&#8217;t spend money on firewalls and secure servers will probably find itself up a very long and treacherous creek without a paddle in very short order.  But all that expensive equipment means nothing unless you make an investment in security intangibles that cost little or nothing at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Our research indicates that the majority of organizations tend to think about security solely in terms of technological solutions and not procedure,&#8221; says Joe Greene, vice president of IDC Canada.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s perhaps a common enough refrain that enterprise network managers can say they&#8217;ve heard it all before.  The problem is that, for all its repetition, the message doesn&#8217;t always seem to get through, and Greene says that&#8217;s probably because you can see and touch the results of capital expenditures.  But things you can&#8217;t buy, like solid procedures, processes and good sense, are ultimately intangible.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s got to be someone&#8217;s time involved, and in realistic terms that costs money,&#8221; Greene says, &#8220;But you see organizations that invest in an anti-virus solution and think &#8216;okay, we&#8217;re fine now.&#8217; The investment itself won&#8217;t go very far unless you follow it up, not so much with further investments in products and solutions, but with procedures.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, maintaining a safe network is as much a question of using existing assets as of acquiring new ones.  And ensure you have the proper controls in place to make sure things are happening.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Spyware and adware would not be so much of a problem if users could be made aware of the perils of clicking through the link on that tempting fishing message or downloading allegedly &#8220;free&#8221; software that, in fact, installs a battery of resource-hogging nasties on company systems.<\/p>\n<p>For the IT department, eternal vigilance is the price of network security.  Some of these things are no-brainers, particularly when it comes to defending against malicious network-borne code like viruses and worms.  <\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, it&#8217;s easy to slip into a complacent, false sense of security when there haven&#8217;t been recently any headline-grabbing worm and virus scares like Blaster and Slammer.  However, the risks are so great and the costs so low that Greene says it&#8217;s important to institute processes that keep IT staff and the enterprise as a whole at a state of readiness.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It requires constant vigilance to make sure that employees are aware of the dangers, and to be prepared to deal with problems as soon as they emerge,&#8221; he says.  There are fewer no-brainers, but Greene says that the same vigilant mindset can go a long way to prevent the worst excesses of the on-line criminal element.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the day, the best security is a product of the kind of thing that money can&#8217;t buy: attention to detail, a willingness to keep systems maintained and a mindset that hopes for the best by preparing for the worst.  It&#8217;s just common sense, Greene says, but the problem with that is that common sense isn&#8217;t always that common.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.networkingpipeline.com\/164300859<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3166,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions\/3166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}