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The Element of business security

Editorial Type: Feature     Date: 11-2014    Views: 2628   







Russell Horton, COO of Elitetele.com considers the importance of securing your business in an increasingly complex IT landscape.

In 2012, Laura McLellan of Gartner estimated that by 2017 marketing professionals will spend more on technology than their IT colleagues. Yet the hard-pressed IT professionals will still need to protect everything, and keep employees and company data safe from data breaches and cyber-attack. For IT teams struggling to secure a rapidly-evolving IT landscape, managed firewalls could provide the answer.

A managed firewall service will filter all traffic coming into the network, much like people entering a building. In this way, we can use the analogy of a building with two security guards: a budget security guard versus a UTM security guard, and then assess the drawbacks businesses face when using a budget service.

ANTIVIRUS
People are receiving emails containing viruses, and employees are browsing websites containing malware which leaves some systems infected.

Budget system: Internal antivirus software can help stop the infection, and if they have support, IT will be alerted and begin the clean-up operation. This costs time and money and the system has no idea who is infected or why and systems and data may be irreversibly damaged.

UTM: This system detects the infected emails and blocks them. It also detects malicious websites and blocks access to these sites. It does not permit files that would cause infection, and notifies the NOC and the customer of the events allowing underlying issues and trends to be considered.

DATA LOSS PREVENTION
Staff members are emailing pricelists and pipeline reports to their home email addresses as well as uploading confidential documents to services like Dropbox.

Budget system: A legacy firewall cannot detect this activity, and at 3.00 am there is a large upload to an Uzbekistani IP addresses. While 500MB of data is being uploaded every night, the source, destination and content are unknown. The business is not aware of this and cannot understand how data is leaking into third party hands

UTM: The UTM service identifies the documents and alerts the NOC and business owner. It identifies the perpetrator providing evidence and attribution and the security policy blocks access to Dropbox and related services. Daily reports are sent by the service highlighting anomalies in traffic patterns and the company can restrict web access to authorised employees at specified times. Any violations or access attempts are proactively detected and reported.

WIRELESS NETWORKING
The building operates a Wi-Fi network for staff, meaning that all internal systems can be accessed by staff, using wireless devices.

Budget system: The level of control is poor as Wi-Fi networks often provide full unrestricted access without granular policies. The Wi-Fi networks can be impersonated by rogue access points, allowing staff to naively join fake networks, and Wi-Fi networks can also (accidentally) be enabled, granting full access to the corporate networks. Unauthorised access attempts are also not logged by the budget system.

UTM: The firewall supports Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and access to wireless can also be controlled by device type, for example iPhone, Android etc. UTM supports multiple wireless networks with different policies (e.g. Guest, Directors, Sales), and for larger sites, multiple access points can be installed, all managed by the central firewall. The firewall can detect unauthorised access attempts to the wireless networks and alert the NOC.

In short, companies assessing the risks their networks are exposed to can find themselves falling short. In contrast a managed firewall solution reduces or eradicates these risks while dramatically increasing network visibility, detection and defence. For businesses, data loss, viruses and other breaches cause significant financial and reputational damage. Not only do managed firewalls remove the headache of complex management from IT teams, they also offer lower operational costs adding improved performance.

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