The Importance of Network Security
Alex Blasser, Aley Russell, and Elizabeth Ventre
ITEC 200
Professor Melander
June 20, 2009
As a student or faculty member of American University, one is very familiar with the process of logging into Cisco Clean Access, which allows students to access the Internet all over campus. In order to verify your identity, one must type in their AU user name and their personalized password in order to gain access to the network. Without even noticing, you are given access to the network through your password and login. Once you log on, you are under the watch of Cisco Clean Access, which serves as a Network Admission Control (NAC), a common form of network security. By having a network security agent, such as Cisco Clean Access, American University is protecting themselves from hackers and viruses. Weekly test are preformed on your laptop in order to ensure the computer is clean of any sort of viruses or corrupted files. If a computer is found infected and there was no network security, there is a large possibility that the same virus could spread to every computer that is logged onto the network. This is the very reason why network security is so important to any sort of organization: it not only ensures that approved, safe people are a part of the network, but also that the computers being used are wiped clean of damaging viruses. Without this sort of protection, any organization can easily become a victim of fraud, stolen private information, and even entire network crashes.
The main type of technology keeping business networks safe is prevention and resistance technology, which ‘prevents’ and ‘blocks’ information systems from hackers and viruses. The first variety of this technology employed by businesses is a type called Content Filtering. Organizations use this software to sift through information, whether it be through files being accessed by the person or e-mails being sent back and forth, in order to prevent the transmission of unauthorized information. Organizations can use content filtering technologies to prevent any suspicious files from transmitting potential viruses to the network. Content filtering software is also capable of filtering spam, which as many of us know is a form of unsolicited e-mail. Spam seems relatively harmless, but corporate business losses from spam peeked around a total of $198 billion in the year 2007.
The next form of prevention and resistance technology is encryption. Encryption scrambles information into an alternative form that requires a key or password to decrypt, or access, the information.
For example, if information was stolen from a company and the information taken was encrypted, the person stealing the information would be unable to read or access it. Encryption works in a number of ways: it can switch the order of characters, replace characters with other characters, insert or remove characters, or even create mathematical formula to convert the information into some sort of code. A prime example of the type of company that use encryption are e-businesses. They use encryption in order to protect sensitive customer information when it is being transmitted through the web, such as credit card numbers and addresses.
The last and most common defense for preventing the stealing of information is a firewall. A firewall is hardware and/or software that guards a private network by analyzing the information leaving and entering the network. Firewalls examine each message or bit of information that wants to enter a company’s system. Unless the message has the correct markings, the firewall prevents it from entering the network. This eliminates a viruses’ or hackers’ access not only to the company’s network, but also the company’s database, which houses private business and customer information.
The main goal of all protection and resistance hardware is to protect information systems from viruses. Viruses are written software whose main purpose is to cause annoyance or damage in information systems and are a main security threat. It includes many forms, such as worms, distributed denial of service attack, Trojan horse viruses, backdoor programs, and polymorphic viruses and worms, all of which are capable of stealing information and shutting down entire networks. If these prevention and resistance technologies fail, detection and response software can be used to identify the problem and eliminate it. Antivirus software is the most common type of defense within detection and response technologies.
Network security is crucial to any businesses in today’s modern age. This is important because a hacker can potentially access the whole internal network, which might lead to confidential information and documents being downloaded by the hacker. When businesses are secured, the customer satisfaction rate is higher, due to the customers knowing that their information is secure and safe. Therefore, this allows the business to prosper and become more affluent because the customer satisfaction rate remains and the customers stay loyal to the business. In addition, outside onlookers might decide to become a customer themselves because they know that their information will remain safe.
Businesses’ information systems become completely vulnerable without the protection that network security offers. If a company were functioning without network security, business would have to worry about many things, including the financial impacts. Money would be stolen or lost, or customers would move their business elsewhere because of the company’s inability to keep private information safe. A business would also need to keep in mind what would happen to a businesses’ supply chain. If the network was breached, the businesses’ website could crash or go down, ending in possible business failures. A breach in security could possibly involve the misuse of computer data-as the hacker might misuse the data by stealing or changing it. A business would also need to have a backup plan or recovery capabilities in case they were hacked. A person may believe that smaller companies are less likely to be targets of attack, but because larger companies spruce up their network security so much, hackers are more so focusing on the small and medium sized businesses.
With the growing importance of technology to businesses, the more businesses will need to protect their information systems through network security. Networks and databases contain all the important information in a business, and without the protection of firewalls, content filtering, antivirus software and protection and resistance technology, businesses would struggle and ultimately fail. Even day-to-day actions, such as logging onto the Internet, would create a vulnerable environment for not just businesses, but regular people too. All in all, the technology used to protect businesses is vital. Without network security, technology would lose its relevance throughout the world.
Works Cited
1) Baltzan, Paige. Essentials of Business Driven Information Systems. Irwin/McGraw-Hill.
2) Bellovin, S. M., and W. R. Cheswick. "Network Firewalls." Communications Magazine, IEEE Sept. 1994: 50-57.
3) Heary, James, Jerry Lin, Chad Sullivan, and Alok Awgeral. Cisco NAC Appliance: Enforcing Security with Clean Access. 1st ed. Cisco P, 2007.
4) Kaufman, Charlie, Radia Perlman, and Mike Spencier. Network Security. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall P, 2002. <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1408349>.
5) Stallings, C. "Network Security." 12 Sept. 2008. Aladin. American University, Washington, DC. 20 June 2009 <http://http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:co59B896sFIJ:www-ist.massey.ac.nz/GIPI/Lectures/ICT_Updates/GIPI%2520network%2520security_aug2006_3s.pdf+network+security>.
