One of the biggest concerns of users and companies is to maintain security and anonymity on the Internet. One that can help us achieve both is the use of a VPN. However, when we talk about maintaining the security of a network, the issue is more complex. Without a doubt, the objective that we are going to seek by making a series of adjustments is going to be to have a more secure network and equipment. In this article, we are going to learn about the best network security practices to be safe from cyber criminals.
Everything you need to do to be protected
If you want to improve the network security approach, you are going to have to emphasize a series of concepts that we name below.
Configure the firewall correctly
When it comes to configuring your firewall, you should understand four basic types of rules: network level, circuit level, application level, and stateful multilayer. One thing to note is that these rules must be active for any of the three basic types of firewalls. Those are packet filters, stateful inspection, and proxy servers.
Whether we are a company or an individual, we need to properly strengthen and configure our firewall to protect ourselves. To be today at a private or company level without a firewall is to assume very high risks. In the case of not knowing how to configure a firewall, seek the help of professionals if it is a company or if it is private, friends and acquaintances who know how to do it correctly. You may be interested in knowing the best practices for configuring a firewall on any system.
Check access control
Having many users with custom permissions can quickly become a complex task, especially in companies. Here we have to implement an access control program that is simple and intuitive so that it can be used and understood by everyone.
On the other hand, those users must use a strong password to log in. In Microsoft operating systems we have the Windows password policy. This way we can establish that these passwords are robust, that they are not repeated or that they are changed from time to time.
Anti-DDoS tools
Recently in a Radware study, it has been revealed that the DDoS attacks blocked during the first nine months of 2021 have already exceeded all those that occurred in 2020. In that aspect, in the first nine months of last year the DDoS attacks that were blocked increased by 75% .
If we want to successfully prevent a DDoS attack, we need to know the traffic on our network. For this we will need anti-DDoS tools that help us secure and monitor the perimeter, data, clients and remote users of our network. So we have to install systems to detect, analyze and respond to all the threats detected. For this reason, to check if we are prepared, we can use these programs to simulate DDoS attacks.
IPS and IDS as security systems
At a business level, it may be interesting to have intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS). Both can work together to stop cyber attacks.
Thus, the IDS system will analyze the traffic of our network to look for digital signatures that coincide with known attacks. On the other hand, the IPS system also analyzes these packets, but it can also stop the delivery of these packets by using the firewall. In network security, intrusion detection should be a top priority. Two widely known and used IDS and IPS systems are Snort and Suricata, both of which will add a very important layer of protection.
Network segmentation as a line of defense
Network segmentation in a company can allow us to know who is connected to our network. This is going to improve our security and performance by dividing our network into more manageable subnets. Thanks to this we will have control over how the traffic is directed through our network. The purpose of segmenting our network is that it allows us to be one step ahead of cybercriminals by restricting them to a specific area of our network. This will greatly contribute to the damage they may cause being much less.
Finally, in addition to these good practices for network security, it is also convenient that we have the operating system with the latest updates and updated software. We could also add other good tips such as having a good antivirus and using multi-factor authentication in our accounts when possible.