Network Security Controls

We all live in a digitalised era where every organization has their identity on the internet. They must focus on protecting the identity because it reflects your company reputation. Network security is any activity that is designed to protect the integrity and usability of your network and data. In simple terms,

“Network security is the process of taking physical and software preventative measures to protect the underlying networking infrastructure from unauthorized access, misuse, malfunction, modification, destruction, or improper disclosure, thereby creating a secure platform for computers, users, and programs to perform their permitted critical functions within a secure environment.”

It should focus on both software and hardware technologies, protection from a variety of threats and effective secured access to the network. Network security uses multiple layers of defences in the network. It will implement policies and controls to secure the network. Authorized users will get the access to the network while blocking the malicious threats or exploits to the network.

Corporate Network Security

 

Controlling digital access into and out of an organization is an important aspect when we are implementing network security. Most of the medium-scaled and large-scale companies have their presence on the internet and an organization network connected to it. Partitioning boundary of outside internet and the internal network is a critical security measure. We use firewalls to make a controlled barrier to control network traffic in and out of the organizational intranet. Therefore, a firewall can be identified as a,

“A firewall is a network security device, either hardware or software-based, which monitors all incoming and outgoing traffic and based on a defined set of security rules it accepts, rejects or drops that specific traffic”

The firewalls can be used to control what is allowed to traverse from one side to the other. They can be configured to block network traffic to certain destinations. It could be certain IP addresses or service ports. One problem for organizations is to provide access to services for the public through the internet such as web, FTP, email while maintaining tight security of the internal network. The approach used to address such an issue is to use a DMZ (demilitarized zone).