Set It and Forget It Is Not A Security Strategy

With all the information in the news about security breaches over the past couple years (Target, Home Depot, J.P. Morgan Chase just to name a few), it is more important than ever to have a security strategy and a proactive security plan in place. The idea of a “set it and forget it” security policy is no longer enough.  And, only being able to react to an event, most of the time means that you are too late. Businesses need to be on the offense, in order to reduce the risk of being compromised.  The security threat landscape continues to grow;  hackers are getting smarter, faster, and their tools have become more sophisticated. Therefore, a good security policy should be both proactively managed and continually updated.

There is a lot of information out there, data is being sent by millions of devices, and there are billions of online communications and transactions occurring over the Internet.  Because the number of packets that traverse the Internet has become so large, it’s become easier for malware to hide within legitimate data streams.  Add a growing trend for cloud computing, mobility, and interoperability between carriers, devices manufacturers, and operating systems, and the result is the number of packets traversing the Internet will just keep getting bigger.

 In order to mitigate the risk of being compromised, you should leave security to a specialized team, that has the training and skill set to be your advocate when it comes to providing the highest level of protection for your Internet traffic.  Most of us don’t do our own dental work, or repair our own cars, so why would we consider architecting, implementing, and managing our own security platform.

Today’s technology is supporting enormous amounts of proprietary business, financial, and personal information flowing across  the internet. So how do you protect that data from being compromised?  A firewall alone will only provide limited protection. The best defense is a multi-layered strategy, one that is proactively monitored, updated as new threats are identified, and where new software is quickly tested and installed as vendors develop fixes and improvements to known vulnerabilities.

A Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution is the best way to protect your data, your infrastructure, and to ensure business continuity. Combining UTM with Global Threat Management provided through a Security Operations Center is really the right choice for customers looking at comprehensive security protection.  Start with a firewall that acts as a rules engine, either allowing or denying traffic based on source and destination  IP address, port and protocol.  Layer on Intrusion Detection and Prevention Services (IDPS), which proactively looks at incoming traffic to identify known signatures and traffic anomalies. IDPS will take action when either a known threat or an unusual traffic pattern is identified;  based on the threat severity level (low, medium or high),  and the customer’s unique incident handing policy.  Layer on Web and Content Filtering so companies can control access to specific web sites or web site categories.  Web and Content Filtering can also scan for malware, and either block the site from downloading  content or create a warning message to the requestor.   (An added bonus to Web and Content Filtering is that you can block access to certain websites in order to keep productivity on track and ensure bandwidth  is being used for legitimate business purposes.)   Layer on Secure Remote Access so that mobile uses can create secure, encrypted VPN session on demand, to tie into their corporate VPN.   And, allow remote sites to connect to each other by creating a private VPN through IP Sec tunnels, to send  and receive information securely.

Data breaches come from three primary sources: malicious or criminal activity, system glitches, and human error.  So, they can be intentional or accidental.  Nobody can guarantee you with absolutely certainty that you will never be breached or compromised.  But implementing a comprehensive, proactively managed, multi-layered  security strategy is the best way to mitigate that risk.  Having your network compromised not only may cause an interruption to your business and lost productivity, but can also create potential liability, damage your reputation,  and give your competitors a strategic advantage.

Stay secure –  and learn about how our Centralized, Affordable Cloud Security Services can help.

- Mike Rhea