Hacking
Although the internet is a great medium for communication and collaboration there are many people who attempt to gain unauthorised access to internet-connected systems every day ("hacking"). The attempts are sometimes co-ordinated against target companies but on the whole they are indiscriminate. Most computer systems installed out-of-the-box will automatically reply to connection requests coming from the internet. Any that do reply will quickly become victims. This will include your systems unless they have adequate protection.
Firewalls
The industry-standard technique for combating connection requests is to use a firewall. You can think of a firewall as an egg-timer with a filter at the narrowest point. All of the information flowing in and out of your network to and from the internet passes through this single point. Each piece of information that attempts to pass through this point is scrutinised and any that do not pass the rules are automatically stopped from travelling any further.
A firewall allows users inside your network to send information out or to request information to be sent back. The firewall keeps a list of what your users requested and allows corresponding answers back. Any information that comes from the internet that cannot be matched with an original user request is an illegal attempt to enter the network. The data is dropped and a record is made of where it came from. This can then be used to track potential hackers down.
Your system will be connected to the internet using a broadband router. Most broadband routers come with a built-in firewall that we configure. However, there are good reasons not to trust that these are effective and we supply additional dedicated firewall servers that sit behind the broadband firewall. You can think of this as an egg-timer behind an egg-timer for added peace of mind.
Added to this to provide the ultimate in security we also install personal firewalls on each of your desktops - this way no employee on the inside of the network can gain unauthorised access to sensitive information held on individual computers.
Intrusion detection systems
Sitting between the firewalls (like the filling in a sandwich) you can have an intrusion detection server. This constantly looks for suspicious traffic coming from the broadband firewall to prove that the combined firewall solution is effective.
Internet security solutions like this are usually only found in large corporations and we are concerned about the huge number of small businesses and private individuals that could be exposing their information every day without even knowing it.
