...Importance of Firewall The importance of a firewall is that it blocks malware that would be able to scan your computer to find its vulnerable areas and then attempt to break it while it is at its weakest point. First of all there is only one way to make your computer completely safe from attack and that is either when it is off or unconnected from the Internet. Other than that there are always vulnerabilities. However, you can make it as close to hacker proof as possible while it is connected to the Internet. The way to do this is to have a personal firewall installed along with antivirus and anti spyware protection. Plus you have to make sure that all three of these are updated on the regular. Additional protection is available to a network that used a router with a firewall feature. Firewalls protect your computer from outside attacks by guarding it from unnecessary Internet traffic. They can however be configured to block certain data while letting other data in. The importance of a firewall on your computer can not be underestimated especially for those who are always connected to the Internet. Firewalls are positioned between your computer and your network and are great for protecting multiple computers but also offer a great degree of protection for single computer use. It allows individual users decide how much content they want to filter through and what websites are safe to use. In some cases users have a very lax opinion of what should and should not be allowed...
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...Deploying Application Firewall in Defense in Depth Principle Abstract Information security should be a priority for businesses, especially when they are increasingly involved in electronic commerce. With the understanding that securing an operating system successfully requires taking a systematic and comprehensive approach, security practitioners have recommended a layered approach called defense-in-depth. The cost and complexity of deploying multiple security technologies has prevented many organizations from achieving their information security goal. In view of these constraints and in compliance with recent with recent corporate and industry regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, businesses now deploy application firewalls as security measures. Based on the foregoing, the author has recommended the use of application firewalls as a single platform for achieving layered security through network protection, application protection and data protection. This paper commences by examining the defense in depth theory and the types of application firewall and the author concludes by citing the Institute for Computing Applications (IAC) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) as an example of an organization which engaged application firewalls in resolving its network security problem. Research Analysis/ Body The development of Information security is of paramount importance to organizations that have online presence...
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...Firewalls are essential security elements in any network. However, as with all aspects of network security, deploying firewalls is a complicated task. Many factors need to be considered, chief among them is cost and function. A dilemma faces all firewall administrators: what is the proper balance between firewall security and network usability. In other works, how can one make the network secure as possible with a firewall while maintaining ease of use and maintaining appropriate speed of the connections for the users? There is no one or easy answer to this question. Each network and organization is unique. I believe that fact is the key to a good answer. Since each organization has unique objectives and goals the firewall must protect those security elements that achieve those objectives and goals. To some extent, firewalls must be customized to meet the needs of the organization. I have read about the trade-offs of an out-of-the-box firewall versus a firewall that is built from scratch to meet the requirements of a particular network’s security. A do-it-yourself firewall has the advantage of being highly customized to the needs of the organization and an out-of-the-box firewall generally is more expensive. Does that make a do-it-yourself firewall the better choice? I think not. It seems to me that a pre-built firewall has one overriding advantage when compared to a do-it-yourself unit: documentation and support. What if the builder of that do-it-yourself firewall...
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...Riordan Manufacturing is an international manufacturer of plastics and is currently make its mark on the industry as an industry leader. Currently Riordan Manufacturing has four locations that all serve different purposes in the company. Riordan Manufacturing has locations in Albany, Georgia, Pontiac, Michigan, Hangzhou, China and the corporate headquarters in San Jose, California. Riordan Manufacturing uses a Wide Area Network (WAN) that allow the three locations to be connected to the corporate headquarters in San Jose, California. Along with the Wide Area Network to connect the locations to the Corporate Headquarters of Riordan Manufacturing, each location has its own Local Area Network (LAN). Network Architecture. The topology of the networks varies from site to site. The network of the Corporate Headquarters and the location in China both use a bus topology in both networks there is a single 100BaseT line that is either connected to a server or an interface device. The other two site Albany, Georgia and Pontiac, Michigan both use what seems to be a partial mesh topology or a hybrid topology. The servers on these networks are all connected together , the interface devices are connected to the server, and the clients and printers are then connected to only the interface devices. All of the locations have their own local area network which is connected to the Corporate Headquarter though a point to point connection which is a star topology. The China location has a point...
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...Network Design Project Intruction Kudler Fine Foods is making steps to inhanse the existing network, including wireless technology. These changes are being provided to improve the comuunication links between the stores and all employees. We will be implementing new technologies to automate inventory managment by creating orders of products from the transactions at the POS. The VOIP phones will be repalced with wireless VOIP phones and will allow for the employees to take calls as they provide servieces for their costumers. The improvements in network security will provide real time monitoring. Timeline The redesign of the Kudler Fine Foods will be an extreme undertaking. We will need three months to fully reconfigure the network. Since each store will have to have new cable and equipment run throughout, the downtime for each location will be minimul. In the network closet the new router will be installed, along with the two new switches. The Cat 6 Ethernet has to be run from this closet to each access point. The two servers will need to be backed up and the data will be uploaded to the new servers. A wireless access point will be added to the network and the printers and VOIP phones will be configured. While the store is closed, all the user devices will be connected to the new ports and the network will be connected to the inetnet. Design Approach and Rationale My approach to the design of this network starts with security and usablilty. The network most be fast, reliable...
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...Attack Prevention Delontey Mango CMGT441 May 31, 2011 Robert Markovic Attack Prevention The following paper will try to answer and explain the importance of protection and address antivirus software’s that prevents viruses from attacking personal and corporation computers. Protecting personal and corporate computer at home or office is very important. It comes to the IT community that no matter how hard a client tries or do viruses will intrude his or her network one day. The importance of virus prevention is to save data and hardware. The software companies give clients tools and directions on how to prevent virus from attacking computers. Antivirus software can prevent some but not all viruses from attacking. The article states “It is a sort of “sleuth and burglar” game being played by antivirus and virus producers. The most and ever updated antivirus, shields you against all defined threats till that time. You can subscribe to auto update feature which works for you behind the screens giving the best possible protection when you go online” (Secureurpc, 2010). This protection software advises the client about suspicious files. When a client cannot catch or kill a worm know as a virus, this software will allow the client to quarantine and run a full scan of the network. Spyware prevention and pop up blockers helps in preventing viruses on a network. As soon as a client connects to the Internet spyware is the automated software that launches and display a report...
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...Hardware and Software Firewalls Explained A firewall is a protective system that lies, in essence, between your computer network and the Internet. When used correctly, a firewall prevents unauthorized use and access to your network. The job of a firewall is to carefully analyze data entering and exiting the network based on your configuration. It ignores information that comes from an unsecured, unknown or suspicious locations. A firewall plays an important role on any network as it provides a protective barrier against most forms of attack coming from the outside world. Firewalls can be either hardware or software. The ideal firewall configuration will consist of both. In addition to limiting access to you computer and network, a firewall is also useful for allowing remote access to a private network through secure authentication certificates and logins. While many people do not completely understand the importance and necessity of a firewall, or consider it to be a product for businesses only, if your network or computer has access to the outside world via the Internet then you need have a firewall to protect your network, individual computer and data therein. Hardware Firewalls Hardware firewalls can be purchased as a stand-alone product but more recently hardware firewalls are typically found in broadband routers, and should be considered an important part of your system and network set-up, especially for anyone on a broadband connection. Hardware firewalls can be effective...
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...company had a firewall, why didn't it stop the intruders? Do you think an Intrusion Prevention System would have helped in this situation? Where and how was the company utilizing encryption? Do you think this gave them a false sense of security? D&A Laboratories had an external firewall in place to protect their information systems from unauthorized access. Protecting companies’ data in today’s world can be a challenging task. Firewalls should not be only the solution for protecting companies. Firewalls are designed specifically to prevent threats from the outside world from reaching the internal network. In today’s evolving threat landscape, there should be additional layers of security measures to protect information and information systems. Gondcalves (2000) writes, “Firewalls are designed to keep unwanted and unauthorized traffic from an unprotected network like the Internet out of a private network like LAN or WAN, yet still allowing users and other users of the local network to access Internet services.” But just solely implementing firewalls may not ensure the protection of networks. Gondcalves (2000) further writes, “Nevertheless, a firewall is not infallible; Its purpose is to enhance security, not guarantee it” (p.43). The company that I work for has several layers of security counter-measures such as Camera, Access Controls, anti-spyware programs, hierarchical passwords, intrusion detection, and biometric verification in addition to Cisco Firewalls. As learned...
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...will be applied during non-normal business hours.4. Remind end users it is not only stupid to write passwords down, it is against company security policy. End users will be reminded that passwords should be easy to remember but cannot be found in the dictionary. Firewalls are a key part of keeping networked computers safe and secure. All computers deserve the protection of a firewall, whether it’s the thousands of servers and desktops that compose the network of a Fortune 500 company, a traveling salesperson’s laptop connecting to the wireless network of a coffee shop, or your grandmother’s new PC with a dial-up connection to the Internet....
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...to tie all three locations together, to make the internal network configuration in each store a WAN, add VOIP to the multi-store network, figure out which store will house the central servers, and make sure the network is expandable beyond the existing stores. We will be giving a final network design. Specifically in the final network design, we are going to give a timeline for the project, explain the design approach and rationale, analyze the detailed design, prove the design meets the requirements set by Kudler Fine Foods, analyze the current security situation, identify electronic and physical threats to the network, describe potential threat detections and protection techniques, explain the importance of explicit enterprise security policies and procedures, describe how firewalls mitigate some network attack scenarios, describe common security concerns inherent to wired, wireless, and mobile network and design a security hardware and software environment that will protect the organization. The first area we will look at is the design of the new network. The new network will have an overall network architecture of a star network in a WAN or wide area network. Both of these network architecture allow for easy expansion whether it is in store expansion in the case of it being a star network, when new stores are added in a town in California they can join the wide area network with ease or when they expand beyond California, they are already in a wide area network which allows...
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...and malwares and how can we prevent it. To Understand: 1. To know the latest threats of hackers on people’s lives 2. Harmful effects of Malware, Virus and etc. to your device 3. The precautions of using the internet D. Length of time (1.5-2 hours) II. Seminar Rationale A. Why is it important to learn and understand the importance of internet security? There are hundreds thousands hacker attacks in the Philippines alone, and unsecured networks can leave you exposed to any types of virus. So it is important to learn and understand internet security so we can be sure next time we click that browser we’ll be safe. We can also learn very important things about different types of security such as firewalls and anti-virus software against any threat. Not only that, it can also help other IT programmers to make their own anti-virus. * Different ways on applying internet security It can be also applied on mobile or tablet operating systems since it has access on the net to let users know it can be attacked even using these types of device. It will let them know that they can still be protected using firewall and anti-virus software on their mobile devices. * To know the dangers of the internet The internet has a lot of harmful virus that can destroy your hardware, not just by downloading but also by connecting through a network. It is a good idea to let them know what kind of threats are out there B. How does it help the IT industry development ...
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...reaches out to the internet. Computers and servers that touch the internet are ones that must be scanned. As a company you have to make sure that you configure the security settings for the operating system, internet browser and security software. As a company you also want to set personal security policies for online behavior. There also needs to be an antivirus installed on the network like Norton or Symantec which blocks threats targeting the vulnerabilities. Your firewall, which is your first line of defense, is susceptible to two common types of attacks. First there are attacks against the firewall itself with the purpose of the attacker being to take control of the firewalls functionality and then launching a DoS attack. The second type of attack against firewalls is an attack on the LAN side of the firewall. These attacks circumvent the rules and policies of the firewall to gain access to the devices that are supposed to be protected by the firewall. The largest vulnerability that exists with firewalls is improper configuration settings. This can lead to the development of security holes which allow unauthorized access from both outside and within your network. All of the aforementioned attacks, threat and vulnerabilities can be mitigated and or avoided altogether. There are several keys to ensuring that your...
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...As utilization of network, technology evolves so does security issues surrounding it. The growing demand of E-commerce on the internet continues to set infinite risks of being attacked. Security is paramount for safe and secure E-commerce sites. As properly installed and maintained firewall continue providing security, it is not adequate to provide defense against intrusion. For adequate defense against intrusion, Additional security appliances such as IPS, network scanners, IDS, and vulnerability assessment kits should; be part of the system. It is essential to protect one’s computer network in today’s global market environment. Intrusion detection system (IDS) is one of the significant software that can monitor intrusion activities. In Afghanistan we utilize and IPS, IDS, web proxy, event collector, and firewall as a security solution. As the demand of network, technology in the network continues to flood the market, so does its vulnerability. There are multiple ways of detecting an intrusion into the network. Intrusion detection products are increasingly becoming famous in the global market and are major intrusion detecting devices. Traditionally, firewall was believed to provide adequate defense against network intrusion, however; the recent growth of new software has prompted for other defense appliances. One of the fundamental principles of intrusion detection is to detect of any attempt of intrusion and alert the operator. This way, it will be possible for my boss...
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...In this case study we have been asked to create a report about disaster recovery and the best practices involved for such an incident. There are many types of disaster recovery systems that can be employed. For our purposes I will talk about two of the currently industry standards. First is the "Cloud-Based" disaster recovery. In this type of recovery, SMPR would be required to lease network storage space from a cloud-based DR vendor and SMPR would set up proprietary backup software that would communicate with the vendors system and remotely and securely store SMPR's backup data and network configurations on the Cloud, or in other words in a server farm of hosted SAN devices. This option is typically a little more cost effective because the vendor has to maintain the hardware for storage, and ensure that it can be accessed within an agreed upon SLA. The next method of disaster recover we will talk about is called a Co-Location shorted to Co-Lo in the industry. In a Co-location setting, you pay rental space for a building, you then bring in your own hardware and setup and manage your own connections to this location for your data backups and storage. Typically in a Co-Lo, you will need to worry about how much power you will use, how much rack space will be required, and how much bandwidth you will need between the SMPR offices and Co-Lo. A Co-Location typically has many redundant systems to ensure that your servers do not lose power, or data connection, they generally have features...
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...Security Assessment for Aircraft Solutions Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Company Overview 3 Security Vulnerabilities 4 Hardware Vulnerability – Absence of a Firewall 4 Policy Vulnerability – Lack of Timely Updates 5 Recommended Solutions 6 A Hardware Solution 6 Impact on Business Processes 9 A Policy Solution 9 Impact on Business Processes 10 Summary 10 References 12 Executive Summary This report will seek to evaluate and address security weaknesses with the Aircraft Solutions company. As security weaknesses are pointed out relating to hardware and policy weaknesses, recommendations will be made to Aircraft Solutions to be examined and hopefully implemented to improve IT security operations. Aircraft Solutions, located in Southern California, recognized leader in the design and fabrication of component products and services for companies in the electronics, commercial, defense, and aerospace industry. In reviewing Aircraft Solutions and its operations, uncovered were security vulnerabilities. Two vulnerabilities that were evident were issues with a lack of firewalls and the current security policy in place that is reviewed only every two years. Recommendations have been made that made help to remedy these vulnerabilities through the use of virtualization and by changing the security policy to be evaluated semi-annually instead of every two...
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