Protecting the company's servers and network.
Mar 2023
Protecting the company's servers and network
Protecting your network and information - why do you need it?
Network attacks disrupt company resources and cause significant financial and reputational damage. Every year hackers hone their skills and develop more and more sophisticated methods of hacking company servers. Depending on the severity of the breach, your business may be disrupted or even halted indefinitely. To protect themselves from hacker attacks, companies should comprehensively apply various means of network protection and identify cases of illegal penetration in the storage of information at an early stage. Even corporations are sometimes powerless to stop cybercriminals. Tell us how to secure your business from cyber-attacks in our material.
What principles are used to protect information networks
What principles should be observed by security service in order to protect servers and corporate network? Among them are the following:
Protection of devices in the network by means of current high technologies - reliable anti-viruses, auto-renewal of signature databases, etc.
Increasing resiliency of network devices and the ability to quickly restore functionality. As part of this principle, the state of the infrastructure (devices, services, applications) should be regularly monitored and protection tools should be promptly installed.
Continuous monitoring of network bandwidth. It is necessary to have highly effective defenses and tools that prevent illegal intrusion into the infrastructure.
Availability of additional resources for fast and seamless (for users) migration from one to another in case of performance failures.
Types of network attacks
Attackers are constantly expanding the arsenal of means by which they break into corporate networks and servers of both small and large organizations. The difference for companies will only be noticeable in the scale of the consequences and the capabilities to withstand hacker attacks. Among the latter are:
Network reconnaissance. An intruder scans the network through special applications, identifying vulnerabilities through which more serious actions can be conducted later.
DDoS attack. A site failure, preventing ordinary users from continuing their work at a particular Internet resource.
Phishing. Fraudulent actions that involve sending emails from a similar address or replacing a portal with a fake copy.
Use of special malicious codes - Trojans, rootkits, viruses.
XSS attacks. Deployment on user's PCs via identified weaknesses on the server.
IP spoofing. Malicious user acts as an official user in the system.
Buffer overflow. Application or system vulnerability detection and further actions for RAM violation, application emergency shutdown and binary code execution.
Packet sniffing. A special sniffer application retrieves usernames and passwords from captured network packets.
Intrusion attacks. Taking control of the operating system.
Mail Bombing. Bombing attacks by incapacitating a mailbox or server.
Man-in-the-Middle. Penetrating into an organization's network to retrieve packets of information that users transmit within the system.
To implement effective protection for your organization's servers and network, you need to constantly monitor all network activity and immediately respond to the very early warning signs of various vulnerabilities and suspicious behavior.
Risks of not properly securing the server and network
How attackers can make use of the information:
Resell stolen information or use it for blackmail.
Swap the data in storage or over the network.
Install spyware applications to monitor users' activities.
Send phishing emails to steal users' personal information.
Hack into emails and send out messages on behalf of the owner of the email account.
Divulge private or proprietary information.
Delete particularly sensitive data.
The risks of insufficient information security are very significant for business. Therefore, the security service needs to reliably organize the identification and elimination of possible and real threats, before they harm the activity of the organization.
Who threatens the security of servers and networks
Vulnerabilities in information security can be caused by accidental or intentional actions of people (employees of the organization and hackers from outside), various force majeure and failures of technical side - equipment failures, power outages, etc.
Attack detection as an initial means of network protection
One of the most effective and difficult network defenses is to detect attacks before they cause significant damage to an organization. But hackers are so good at disguising their activities that their manipulations look like normal user activity or take place covertly using the resources of company employees. The difficulty for security services is that it is possible to detect suspicious changes in traffic only if the hackers have already done something. Dedicated solutions can continuously monitor all information flow at the network packet level and automatically detect anomalies. The security service receives an instant report on suspicious activity and its initiator. With this information, security professionals can immediately prevent or remediate the incident and its consequences, gaining invaluable experience dealing with this type of threat.
Network security tools
Every single type of network attack is a major security challenge. Hackers are constantly improving their skills, and IS professionals must respond accordingly, using reliable, automated, and continually updated tools to protect networked information. When defending against known threats, it is necessary to study each new incident and develop countermeasures. Additionally, the creators of the various security applications are constantly innovating ways to combat intruders, and offer the best practices to their users in response to their needs.
Network security software and hardware
Today the following software and hardware server and network security tools are used:
Antivirus software - finds, removes or isolates malicious codes found.
"Sandboxes - handles suspicious programs in a virtual space.
Firewalls - monitors traffic and reports incoming unexplained information from sources that cannot be verified.
SIEMs and DLP systems - serve as an internal tool to protect against dishonest employees. The first tool monitors database queries and notifies of suspicious events. The second prohibits copying data to an external carrier.
Information encryption by cryptographic methods using different algorithms or noise generators.
Anti-DoS solutions - allows you to protect against DDoS attacks.
Using EDS when transmitting document packets over the network. Allows you to identify the document owner and see the changes made after signing the file.
These are the most common types of software and hardware security features. In reality, there are many more, because the development of tools should keep pace with the emergence of new threats or even outpace them.
Administrative-legislative tools of protection
Administrative-legislative tools are also very effective for information security:
Instructing the organization's employees and imposing fines on those who violate the created set of rules.
Signing a non-disclosure agreement with each employee of the company. Users of the system should be as responsible as possible in the performance of their duties.
The division of access to information into several degrees. Each employee works in the system under his own account, using a password to log in. Confidential data is used only by those users who need it for the performance of their duties. Special applications determine exactly on which computer information was hacked or leaked.
Optimization of HR activities that need to carefully select future employees at the time of interview.
Comprehensive information security solutions for networks
No matter how good the individual tools may be, it is better to use them in an integrated manner. This provides an organization with a server and network security tool that can be easily customized to meet a company's needs and protect against a multitude of threats. With comprehensive tools, IS specialists:
reliably protect the corporate network, servers and client computers from intruders;
ensure the safety of connecting devices to the network;
be able to monitor the software thoroughly, control any changes and react quickly to traffic anomalies and user behavior;
Ensure secure financial transactions, and much more.
Conclusion
When servers and networks are protected by effective solutions that have full control over the organization, then most network attacks can be prevented. With today's comprehensive information security tools, experts monitor everything that is happening, automatically detect incidents and prevent them instantly. If you are interested in other IS issues, as well as network and server administration, please contact Royal Clark Enterprise for qualified assistance.