What is Network Security?
Network security refers to the practice of protecting a computer network with tools, technologies, policies and procedures from cyberattacks, unauthorized access, and data loss. It is essential cybersecurity to have for your business, providing several layers of protection for data and user activity both at the edges of the network and within it. As cyber-criminals advance, with exploitation of network vulnerabilities increasing, having network security in place only becomes more and more important.
Advantages of Network Security
- Enhanced data security – Encryption technologies protect data while it’s traversing through the network. Unauthorized access is prevented and in turn customer data is safe and remains confidential.
- Prevention of Malware and Viruses – Antivirus software and Intrusion Detection Systems prevent malware, viruses, and other malicious threats from infecting systems.
- Better Performance – Increased security means that any attempts to disable the network are prevented, allowing for critical resources for your business to always have availability without interruption. This also means that there is minimal interruption in workflow, improving productivity.
- Secure Remote Access – Secure remote access networks like VPNs provide a method for employees to work remotely with significantly less risk of compromising your business’s network or data.
Challenges of Network Security
It’s important to understand the challenges that come with network security in order to better mitigate and protect against weaker areas.
- Expanding Cyber Threats – Everyday potential cyber threats increase due to improving technologies and new platforms. Attack surfaces increase, allowing potential entry points into networks. It’s important to make sure network security is up to date and thorough in order to prevent from new access points being found.
- Remote Work Risks – While there are ways to encrypt transfer of data, personal devices and other networks will not have as robust network security controls, leaving data potentially vulnerable when working remotely. Ensuring employees are mindful of what their devices connect to and have proper cybersecurity practices is an essential step in decreasing the risk of compromised data while working remotely.
- Managing Administrative Access – Monitoring administrative activity as well and trusting access to the right people is important for businesses to practice. Unrestrained administrative access can lead to insider threats and data breaches.
- Misconfigurations – With the increasing complexity of modern networks and growing use of cloud environments the chance of human error creating a vulnerability significantly increases. Ensure that the people responsible of configuring your networks and cloud environments have a good understanding of what they are working with beforehand to prevent this.
Types of Network Security
There are many different types of network security solutions. These are some of the most common ones:
- Firewalls – Devices that monitor, filter, and control incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predefined security rules that accepts, rejects or drops specific traffic. It acts as a barrier between trusted internal networks and untrusted external networks.
- Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) – A network security applications that monitors the network and system activities for potential malicious activity. It allows rapid detection of attack signatures and abnormal behavior, blocking the malicious traffic and notifying administrators for further inspection. It is essential for stopping threats before they impact the network core and connected devices.
- Sandboxing – A cybersecurity technique that provides a safe environment to open suspicious files by simulating an end-user isolated operating environment.
- Web and DNS Filtering – Domain Name System (DNS) filtering allows for domain-based attacks to be prevented such as hijacking and tunneling. Similarly, URL filtering prevents users from accessing suspicious URLs.
- Network Access Control (NAC) – A system that governs the network so that only permitted users are allowed to access the network. It identifies and authenticates devices, only granting access if the predefined compliance policies are met.
- Remote Access VPNs – Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) encrypt the connections between a device and a network. This ensures that data communicated between the device and the network remains private and secure from unauthorized access, allowing for employees to work remotely without the risk of a compromise.
Related Technologies
While these do not directly support the network, they are important to protecting its infrastructure.
- Endpoint Detection and Response – EDR solutions continuously monitor user and endpoint activities to protect them from malicious activity.
- Email Security – The process to protect email accounts and their contents safe from unauthorized access. It can block potential spam, suspicious links, questionable content and imagery and other abnormalities from reaching the user’s inbox.
- Data Loss Prevention – DLP solutions identify sensitive information, mitigate accidental data sharing, and prevent data exfiltration.
- DDoS Protection – Defends against denial-of-service attacks so that the network experiences no interruptions.
- Application Security – These tools allow for administrators to analyze traffic and quickly form policies to allow, deny, or restrict access to specific apps or categories of them.
- Cloud Access Security Broker – CASB solutions provide security to software-as-a-service users, applications, and data keeping them safe while also providing risk assessments, IT reports, and more.