If you are like me, or most people, you often hear and wonder a lot about security; security, identity security, etc. Well one most people and businesses don’t worry a lot about is their network security. They use a few different passwords, maybe install some anti-virus software and they think that their data is secure. If only it was that easy. In this day and age of technology, any 12 year-old with an internet connection can break through a basic password and even your basic firewalls. With a few easy modifications, you can greatly improve the security of both your home and work networks.
Wireless Networks (Wi-Fi)
The world is becoming increasingly reliant on portable technology. Laptops are becoming more desirable to have and slowly but surely we are seeing the demise of your desktop/workstation computers. This goes for both in the office and in the home. With the advent of mobile computing, businesses and personal users are adding wireless networks to their infrastructure. In our office, we have a few employees on laptops connecting wirelessly to our network so that they can move around the office while working on projects or demonstrating our services for customer. It’s a great solution for a mobile work environment but there can be some downsides.
A non-secure Wi-Fi connection can be a disaster for businesses and personal users. With an unsecured network anyone within range of the Wi-Fi signal can connect to the network and any shared drives, files, folders, or computers on the network. For a personal user this may not sound so bad but do you always pay attention to where you put your files or where other users of your computer have shared out over the network. You could be sharing some very private data. For businesses this could lead to a bigger disaster. Employee and or client information could be shared out. Proprietary software and/or creations could all be out there for anyone with a little time and a Wi-Fi card to access.
But there are ways to secure your Wi-Fi connection. The most common and easy to set up is WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) Encryption. WEP is really a simple concept. You have to create a network key that is a certain number of Hexadecimal characters normally 26 that can be 0-9 and A-F. These keys are case sensitive, so I strongly recommend alternating both letters and numbers along with capitalization. Most wireless routers come with software that will walk you step by step through this process, so with just walking through a few simple steps you can secure your wireless network and any information that may be on it.
Shared network devices
In a business setting you normally have shared devices whether it is a file server or printers, etc. Setting up your network security is key to keeping the wrong files out of the wrong people’s hands. Every folder that you share out should have a list of authorized users. The easiest way to maintain who has access to certain files is to map the network drive, thus restricting who has access to certain files. This also allows the user to see the shared network drive in My Computer as if it was located within the machine itself. The biggest key to all of this is to make sure the right user is connected to the right files on the server, but not giving them more access than they need. You can always add more to what a user can access, but be wary of this because if an employee has too much access it could cost you; whether it being a file getting accidentally deleted or an employee gaining access to more information than they should have.
Firewalls & Passwords
The final thing you should really look at on your network is your networks passwords and firewalls. If you’re a personal user network a lot of crazy passwords isn’t as big of a deal and there is plenty of software out there for firewalls. But for businesses you really need to look at how your network is being passworded and whether or not a hardware or software firewall is the best solution for you. If you are a small company with 15 employees or less it would probably be more cost effective to just use a software based firewall on each individual computer. For anything over 15 users a hardware firewall, normally built into your router, should be more than sufficient for your firewall needs. For a business your passwords should be complex and non repetitive. It should also be a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols. An example would be “DelAwAred0tnet31@!” or something to that affect. You can use symbols to represent letters. But change up your passwords regularly keeping the same passwords for years is almost as bad as having no password at all. Anytime an employee who had access to sensitive information is let go you should most definitely do a password reset. And a scheduled reset of every three or six months would also be a good strategy for network protection.
In all, going through these four areas and making sure you remain vigilant by updating any anti-virus software your company uses and tracking the usage of your network, you will find your network security is greatly improved. And as always we would be more than happy to come out and help you. Give us a call (302)736-5515 for a free on-site consultation.
