In the digital age of today, organizations greatly rely on computer networks to share information through the organization in a productive and efficient manner. Computer networks that are organizational are becoming vast. Assuming that each team member has their personal work station, a large scale company would have few thousand work stations along with numerous servers.

It is highly likely that these workstations may not be centrally managed, nor would they have good parameters for security. It also worth noting that organizations have to sometimes incorporate a variety of hardware, operating units, software and protocols with different level of cyber security awareness among users.

What is Network Security?

To understand what network security is, it is important to have a generalized idea about security. To put it into layman’s terms, security is about protection of assets, and asset is any resource that has great value for an individual or a business.

If there is a monetary value of an asset, then there comes a need to take preventative measures to ensure no one steals or damages that asset. For instance, prevention measures will prevent any theft, while detection detects how, when and who damaged or stole the asset.

Reaction on the other hand involves you to react to damage or theft so that you can recover your assets.  Network security in this case refers to a set of configurations that help businesses protect their confidential data and networks.  It involves the use of both, software and hardware technology.

It combines multiple layers of protection to a company’s network. By doing this, a business’s network is only friendly to authorized users, while hostile to malicious actors.

CIA

CIA stands for Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. The ultimate goal of network security monitoring is to protect the availability, continuity, integrity, and confidentiality of a network. Confidentiality ensures access control, while integrity ensures that all changes made to a business’s network occurs due to authorized engineers.

On the other, availability endures that a network system works promptly, and users never have a problem in accessing service. For instance, if the network or its data is not available to the right users because of general network failures, then the impact may be significant.

The Need for Network Security

You can now imagine that thousands of workstations on company networks are directly connected to the internet. This type of unsecured network is likely to become a target for cyber attacks that comprises valuable data and exposes vulnerabilities.

Network security in this instance refers to different policies and practices that company adopts in order to prevent and monitor all unauthorized malicious access and misconduct of malware. Only a good network security monitoring can identify and prevent major viruses and malware.

It requires businesses to provide an authorized access to data to the network’s administrator. Users that work on that network are assigned ID and passwords that help them access information that is within their access limit. Network security also covers all business transactions and communications that occur between businesses.

Not to mention, networks can be private, and also open to public access. It not only secures business network, but also protects and monitors all operations that take place on the business’s network. One of the most common ways of monitoring and protecting a network resource is by assigning it with a unique name and a password.

Emergence of Network Security Need

The TCP/IP protocol is one the most renowned protocol used for communication. It came about in the year 1980 as an internet working solution. This solution had very little focus on security aspects of a protocol. Instead, this protocol served the purpose of providing communication in a limited trusted network.

Nonetheless, over a certain period of time, this communication became the major standard for unsecured internet communication. However, this protocol came with much vulnerability.  In this protocol, an intruder could easily read the data packet exchanges that happened between the server and client. Moreover, it also had a weak authentication between the client and web server during the initialization of session.

The vulnerability can lead to a hijacking attack where the perpetrator steals the HTTP session of the legitimate user. Attackers can also launch an IP spoofing attack that can cause major disruptions to the business.

Overall, in the TCP/IP protocol, if one layer of security is compromised, the entire communication gets compromised. This is why it is important for businesses to implement security controls at each layer of security. This will help ensure full proof security at different levels.

Achieving Network Security

Ensuring network security may seem to be very simple, however, this is far from the truth. The mechanisms to achieve network security bring standardizations in methods to achieve network security. Some of these mechanisms provide data confidentiality services by transforming data into a non-readable form to prevent unauthorized access.

Cybercrime Emergence

The average annual cost of cyber crime has only increased for each industry. By country, the numbers of cyber crimes are also increasing both in terms of cost and instances. This is why implementing network security incredibly important. There are different types of network security monitoring techniques that businesses can implement.

One of the most common one include antivirus and malware prevention software that detects all bugs and cyber attacks. Sometimes a malware can infect your network but lie dormant for days, weeks or months. This calls for a job of an efficient managed service provider that integrates a security strategy that not only blocks entry but also keeps track of the corrupted files afterwards.

Firewalls put up a barrier between trusted networks and external networks. In a firewall, administrators define rules and policies about traffic entry. It can either be a hardware appliance or software appliance based on the network.

Get High-end Network Security Monitoring Services

Today’s businesses are moving towards the future of network administration and support with the help of cloud collaboration. If you wish to stay ahead of the curb and move to cloud services, Prescient Solutions can help you secure your business’s network. Managed services from Prescient will not only streamline your security, but also reduce your costs at the same time. For more information, visit their website or fill their online form.