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Scenario: You work in a corporate environment in which you are, at least partially, responsible for network security. You have implemented a firewall, virus and spyware protection, and your computers are all up to date with patches and security fixes. You sit there and think about the lovely job you have done to make sure that you will not be hacked.

You have done, what most people think, are the major steps towards a secure network. This is partially correct. What about the other factors?

Have you thought about a social engineering attack? What about the users who use your network on a daily basis? Are you prepared in dealing with attacks by these people?

Believe it or not, the weakest link in your security plan is the people who use your network. For the most part, users are uneducated on the procedures to identify and neutralize a social engineering attack. What’s going to stop a user from finding a CD or DVD in the lunch room and taking it to their workstation and opening the files? This disk could contain a spreadsheet or word processor document that has a malicious macro embedded in it. The next thing you know, your network is compromised.

This problem exists particularly in an environment where a help desk staff reset passwords over the phone. There is nothing to stop a person intent on breaking into your network from calling the help desk, pretending to be an employee, and asking to have a password reset. Most organizations use a system to generate usernames, so it is not very difficult to figure them out.
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In the real world, businesses come in every size, from self-employed entrepreneurs like me to mega malls like Wal-Mart.

On the Internet, companies come in every size, too, from a stand-alone ebook sales page with webmaster and owner all in one, to 300 pound gorilla like Amazon, with over a million pages, who requires the entire population of a small country to serve as webmaster.

If your site is a single page, it is its own network. But if your site is any bigger, and you have plans to grow, it is a network or is fast becoming one. You need network monitoring.

Most ecommerce webmasters are at least somewhat familiar with website monitoring. Many use a website monitoring service or software to keep track of “uptime” and “downtime”.

At your local shopping mall, serious business requires more than just knowing when the front doors are open and when they are closed. Serious ecommerce needs to know more than just when the site is accessible. That is what network monitoring is all about.

What Network Monitoring Monitors

Chances are, your e-business owns one of the following, or uses one of the following remotely:

DNS servers: These are used to translate your site name, like www.URL.com, to the numbers called “IP addresses” that computers understand. If DNS servers are not working properly, end-users will not be able to find your site and will get an error. Usually only an external or remote monitoring service will detect such a problem.

An FTP server: File Transfer Protocol servers are used to help you
exchange files with remote users. If you use FTP, a monitoring
service can make sure it is always up and running.
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Link Load Balancing evens out critical resources on data networks with unpredictable requests issued to a server. For example, a web site with heavy traffic may employ two, three or more servers in a link load balancing program. The link load balancing routines enable a network to “juggle” more traffic that otherwise possible If one server is overwhelmed, the link load balancing scheme forwards them to a different server with extra capacity.

Another aspect to link load balancing concerns the communications channels themselves. In this case the “juggling act” is meant to better distribute processing and communications demands more equitably across the network so that no single a computer is overwhelmed by the demand.

Link Load Balancing - Key Features & Benefits
First and foremost is “availability” - 24/7 Application Availability for complete IP Application access. Local and Global Service providers rely on redundancy and link load balancing between servers, WSD units and distributed sites for complete server continuity across global networks
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The idea of reading email while lounging by the pool, text or instant messaging while doing the laundry, or lounging in the Jacuzzi listening to your MP3 collection is appealing to us all.

Unfortunately, many, or even most, wireless units don’t come with security features already functioning. This may not seem like a big issue to someone who is simply setting up a home network, but there are a number of potential problems you should consider.

The most serious problem is the increase in identity theft. If your network is unsecured, the personal data on your wireless electronic equipment is also unsecured. The order you just placed for a book at Amazon may have given your contact and payment information to an unscrupulous hacker!

Nearly every town in which “WiFi” is common will have “War Drivers” and “War Chalkers” at work. These are people who walk or drive around town with wireless equipment, searching for unsecured networks. The “Chalkers” then live up their name, marking curbs and other public items with chalk so that others can more easily find and exploit your network.
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