We covered the cost of hiring cybersecurity experts in our previous blog entry.  Today, we take a dive into the technology needed to secure your network.

Technology

In today’s threat landscape, a firewall alone will not suffice. Cyberattacks are more complex, whether they engage multiple network layers (e.g. attacking the network and application layers of the OSI model simultaneously), or involve malware that can hop across ports. So, what technology components do you need?

At the very least, a cybersecurity solution must include:

• Firewall and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)
  These make up the first line of defense between your network and the Internet
• Email Protection
  An anti-spam filter is only one aspect of email protection. After all, spam is merely unsolicited junk mail. Emails have proven to be a lucrative way for cybercriminals to deliver malware – be it via a malicious attachment or link. Adequate email protection today incorporates anti-malware, challenge response as well as optical character recognition (or OCR) to identify spam images, blacklists, whitelists, and so much more.
• Web Browsing Protection
  Drive-by-downloads are a serious threat, where visiting a malicious website can put your network security at immense risk. Web browsing protection includes, but is not limited to, content filtering, anti-malware, and HTTPS decryption.
• Virtual Private Network (VPN)
  VPNs are absolutely essential, not only to establish secure connections between multiple office locations, but also for employees who telecommute.
• Zero-Day Protection
  Cybercriminals have created tools allowing them to automate the creation of malware, oftentimes creating new variants of old malware. Because these threats have no known protection, they are called “zero day.” To stress the importance of zero-day protection, at the time of writing this blog entry, Network Box USA has over 411,000 signatures  in our zero-day anti-malware engine, Z-Scan.

Undoubtedly, there are many more components that could be added and discussed at length, such as the importance of a web application firewall (WAF) to protect websites and web applications. For the sake of simplicity, the tools listed above are the bare minimum needed for a base cybersecurity solution.

Costs?  That will vary depending upon the size of your network and the vendor offering.

Stay tuned for our concluding post on Wednesday, June 29^th, wherein we will talk about maintenance.