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Protecting Your Network

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Submitted By princereez83
Words 2274
Pages 10
Protecting Your Network
UMUC
CSEC 610
April 16, 2015
David Gianna

Introduction

According to Beaver (2010), to have a secure operating systems and applications, you need to have a secure network. Devices such as routers, firewalls, and even generic hosts (including servers and workstations) must be assessed as part of the ethical hacking process. There are thousands of possible network vulnerabilities, equally as many tools, and even more testing techniques. You probably don’t have the time or resources available to test your network infrastructure systems for all possible vulnerabilities, using every tool and method imaginable. Instead, you need to focus on tests that will produce a good overall assessment of your network.
Beaver (2010), also states that when you assess your company’s network infrastructure security, you need to look at as the following: * Where devices, such as firewalls or IPS, are placed on the network and how they’re configured. * What external attackers see when they perform port scans, and how they can exploit vulnerabilities in your network hosts. * Network design, such as Internet connections, remote access capabilities, layered defenses, and placement of hosts on the network. * Interaction of installed security devices, such as firewalls, IPSes, antivirus, and so on. * What protocols are in use. * Commonly attacked ports that are unprotected. * Network host configurations. * Network monitoring and maintenance.
If someone exploits a vulnerability in one of the items in the preceding list or anywhere in your network in your network’s security, bad things can happen: * A hacker can use denial of service (DoS) attack, which can take down your Internet connection or even your entire network. * A malicious employee using a network analyzer can steal confidential information in the emails and

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