How to Secure Your Systems
Networking Security Fundamentals
CIS 333
July 28, 2012

How to Secure Your Systems

When we think about technology we think of all the capabilities it gives us and also the headaches it brings. In today's technological world there are many vulnerabilities to the computer networks that we have. If there is a malicious attacker exposes these vulnerabilities can affect the company in many ways. We know that your business could be interrupted causing you thousands of dollars in damage. Not only could you lose business by your network going down, but you can also lose consumer confidence, and ensure the possible penalties imposed on you by the government for not properly securing your customers imperative information. This is why we will be looking at different measures that we can take to be proactive and prevent this from happening. There are several methods or should we say concepts available to the network administrators to help them in securing the networks or should we say the concept of defense-in depth, which is a concept that uses multiple defense strategies. This is a concept that all network administrators and security personnel should practice. Using this method will add several layers of security to your network. Two of those concepts or solutions are DMZ’s (Demilitarized Zones) and IDS’s (Intrusion Detection Systems). DMZ is a physical or logical sub-network that contains and exposes an organization’s external services to a larger untrusted network, usually the internet. Outside traffic from the untrusted internet is allowed only into the DMZ where it can get to certain company services. The Web applications in the DMZ then access the trusted internal network, but prevent the outside user from getting directly to the internal network. IDS which is a network security appliances which is typically installed within the LAN