An Effective Network Security for a Large Firm, Essay Example

To perform an effective network security assessment for a large firm, it is essential to begin with consultation of the employees to determine how they contribute to the regulation of company information. This initial phase should consist of vulnerability assessments, which will be used to determine if employees are willing to give up their usernames and passwords if they are asked to do so through email, phone calls, and in person. It is essential to determine how many employees are willing to give up this information. Those that do have not been properly trained adequately and may need to be reminded that this information should not be distributed. Therefore, if there is a high rate of employee password reporting during this phase of the assessment, an education program discussing network security will be implemented.

Next, I plan to analyze the information technology assets of the company’s data, hardware, software, services, and the IT infrastructure (Gibson, 2011). It is essential to determine the threats and vulnerabilities that exist and to determine how to alleviate them. Risks will be determined by considering the likelihood that vulnerabilities will become threats. In this situation, footprinting can be used to effectively determine which servers and devices are performing which specific functions. This can be mapped, which will allow the company to understand what will happen when different components of the system are compromised. The information retrieved from this process can be used to indicate which systems and processes should be made redundant in case of invasion and to ensure that the system is operational and restorable in these instances.

After the initial risks are assessed, it is important to identify the risks that should be managed. This can be completed using a scanning process. Network scanning will be used to determine which of the company’s systems are currently online. Specifically, ping sweep will be used. Next, port scanning will be used to determine the services and applications that are using these systems to run using Nmap. Finally, vulnerability scanning will be conducted to scan the OS and determine its version number. Once weaknesses are identified, plans can be made to determine how the network can be protected.

To begin removing the vulnerabilities, it is necessary to select control methods. These will depend upon the specific vulnerabilities identified. These controls also aim to reduce the impact of invasions that occur as a consequence of the vulnerabilities. Next, it is necessary to test the controls to ensure that the solutions selected to prevent the vulnerabilities are effective. It may be necessary to mimic an attack to ensure that all relevant data remains protected after applying the protective intervention to the network.

Lastly, the implemented controls should be evaluated. It is likely that the controls will shift over time depending on the needs of the company and the vulnerabilities of their system. Thus, it is important to occasionally review prior controls that have been implemented to ensure that they continue to work well. When this is not the case, it is important to repeat the assessment so that the security needs of the network continue to be met. Failure to do so can result in attacks that put the company’s sensitive information at risk.

References

Gibson D. (2011). Managing Risk In Information Systems. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Giri B. (2012). Ethical Hacking. Must Be Geek. Retrieved from http://www.mustbegeek.com/ethical-hacking/