Network security is any activity designed to protect the usability and integrity of your network and data. It includes both hardware and software technologies. Effective network security manages access to the network. It targets a variety of threats and stops them from entering or spreading on your network.
Network security combines multiple layers of defenses at the edge and in the network. Each network security layer implements policies and controls. Authorized users gain access to network resources, but malicious actors are blocked from carrying out exploits and threats.
Digitization has transformed our world, how we live, work, play, and learn. Every organization that wants to deliver the services that customers and employees demand must protect its network, and its proprietary information from attack. Ultimately it protects your reputation.
Monitor the traffic coming in and going out your firewall and read the reports carefully. Don’t rely on alerts to flag dangerous activity. Make sure someone on your team understands the data and is prepared to take the necessary action.
Keep an eye on new threats as they’re discovered and posted online. For example, the Cisco Talos blog provides instant updates on new threats, vulnerabilities and a detailed weekly threat roundup. Trend Micro’s TrendWatch site tracks current threat activity. Also, you can have the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT, a division of Homeland Security) email alerts to you about recently confirmed software vulnerabilities and exploits.
Enable regular updates for your firewall and anti-virus software.
Train employees on an ongoing basis so they understand any changes to your acceptable-use policy. Also, encourage a ”neighborhood watch“ approach to security. If an employee notices anything suspicious, such as not being able to log into an email account right away, he or she should notify the appropriate person immediately.
Install a data protection solution. This type of device can protect your business from data loss if your network’s security is breached.
Consider additional security solutions that will further protect your network as well as expand your company’s capabilities.
Not every user should have access to your network.To keep out potential attackers, you need to recognize each user and each device. Then you can enforce your security policies. You can block noncompliant endpoint devices or give them only limited access. This process is network access control (NAC).
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Any software you use to run your business needs to be protected, whether your IT staff builds it or whether you buy it. Unfortunately, any application may contain holes, or vulnerabilities, that attackers can use to infiltrate your network. Application security encompasses the hardware, software, and processes you use to close those holes.
“Malware,” short for “malicious software,” includes viruses, worms, Trojans, ransomware, and spyware. Sometimes malware will infect a network but lie dormant for days or even weeks. The best antimalware programs not only scan for malware upon entry, but also continuously track files afterward to find anomalies, remove malware, and fix damage.
Organizations must make sure that their staff does not send sensitive information outside the network. Data loss prevention, or DLP, technologies can stop people from uploading, forwarding, or even printing critical information in an unsafe manner.
To detect abnormal network behavior, you must know what normal behavior looks like. Behavioral analytics tools automatically discern activities that deviate from the norm. Your security team can then better identify indicators of compromise that pose a potential problem and quickly remediate threats.
Email gateways are the number one threat vector for a security breach. Attackers use personal information and social engineering tactics to build sophisticated phishing campaigns to deceive recipients and send them to sites serving up malware. An email security application blocks incoming attacks and controls outbound messages to prevent the loss of sensitive data.
Firewalls put up a barrier between your trusted internal network and untrusted outside networks, such as the Internet. They use a set of defined rules to allow or block traffic. A firewall can be hardware, software, or both. Cisco offers unified threat management (UTM) devices and threat-focused next-generation firewalls.
An intrusion prevention system (IPS) scans network traffic to actively block attacks. Cisco Next-Generation IPS (NGIPS) appliances do this by correlating huge amounts of global threat intelligence to not only block malicious activity but also track the progression of suspect files and malware across the network to prevent the spread of outbreaks and reinfection.
Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting mobile devices and apps. Within the next 3 years, 90 percent of IT organizations may support corporate applications on personal mobile devices. Of course, you need to control which devices can access your network. You will also need to configure their connections to keep network traffic private.
Software-defined segmentation puts network traffic into different classifications and makes enforcing security policies easier. Ideally, the classifications are based on endpoint identity, not mere IP addresses. You can assign access rights based on role, location, and more so that the right level of access is given to the right people and suspicious devices are contained and remediated.
A virtual private network encrypts the connection from an endpoint to a network, often over the internet. Typically, a remote-access VPN uses IPsec or Secure Sockets Layer to authenticate the communication between device and network.
A web security solution will control your staff’s web use, block web-based threats, and deny access to malicious websites. It will protect your web gateway on site or in the cloud. “Web security” also refers to the steps you take to protect your own website.
Wireless networks are not as secure as wired ones. Without stringent security measures, installing a wireless LAN can be like putting Ethernet ports everywhere, including the parking lot. To prevent an exploit from taking hold, you need products specifically designed to protect a wireless network.
Talos is Cisco’s industry-leading threat research and intelligence team, and every Cisco security product is protected through Talos. Talos has more than 250 threat researchers working round the clock and across the globe, with a repository of 100 terabytes of threat intelligence.
We see a third of the world’s email traffic daily and over 2 percent of the world’s DNS requests. We encounter over 1.1 million unique malware samples each day through our Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) and threatGRID technology, which allows us to block 19.7 billion threats a day on our customers’ networks.
That’s right-19.7 billion threats blocked a day.
Such vast knowledge and research capabilities underwrite Cisco’s cybersecurity solutions, which offer the visibility, automation, flexibility, and scalability required to protect your network environment against increasingly sophisticated threats.
Cisco Umbrella is a cloud security service that provides built-in protection against attacks over your internet connection, helping you mitigate the time and cost spent dealing with cyber attacks.
The solution provides proactive protection against threats on the internet, such as malware, botnets and phishing attacks. It helps keep your business safe by delivering clean traffic before it reaches your internal network, effectively learning where attacks are being staged, and blocking threats over all ports and protocols. You can be confident that with secure internet access, you are protected with a first layer of defence against malware.
Cisco Umbrella provides visibility into all internet requests across your network, across every port, protocol or app to uncover and block connections to malicious domains and IP's. See why small businesses are realizing the security multiplier effect by using DNS to complement existing security measures. What attacks aren’t you seeing?
Sign up and get your free 14 day, no obligation Cisco Umbrella trial now.
A traditional firewall is able to control the traffic at the point of entry or exit within the network. In other words, it’s the drawbridge between your own business and the ‘great unwashed’ of the rest of the internet.
This was perfect for those simple times – back when you used to be able to see everything that was latching onto your network. Now, businesses are increasingly playing host to a myriad of unknown devices, and a deep dark sea of cloud applications which are downloaded by employees.
The main difference with a next generation firewall is that you can set application controls and policies. For example, if a member of your staff downloads some file sharing software that may be unsecure, this will be automatically be made visible and you can do something about it instantly.
Plus, overall you will gain far more visibility and control over the users, devices, threats, and vulnerabilities in your network. So when your board asks you, “Are we secure?” you can provide a much more comprehensive answer than if you have a traditional firewall that only controls traffic.
Learn more about Next Generation Firewalls or find the best Next Generation Firewall for you.
Next-generation endpoint security is the integration of prevention, detection, and response capabilities in a single solution, leveraging the power of cloud-based analytics. Cisco AMP for Endpoints is a lightweight connector that works on your Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS devices.
Cisco AMP for Endpoints provides comprehensive protection against the most advanced attacks. It prevents breaches and blocks malware at the point of entry, then rapidly detects, contains, and remediates advanced threats that evade front-line defenses and get inside your network.
Prevent: Strengthen defences using the best global threat intelligence, and block both fileless and file-based malware in real time.
Detect: Continuously monitor and record all file activity to quickly detect stealthy malware.
Respond: Accelerate investigations and automatically remediate malware across PCs, Macs, Linux, servers, and mobile devices (Android and iOS).
It can use the public cloud or be deployed as a private cloud. AMP continuously monitors and analyzes all file and process activity within your network to uncover the 1 percent of threats that other solutions miss. AMP never loses sight of where a file goes or what it does. If a file that appeared clean upon initial inspection ever exhibits malicious behavior, AMP is there with a full history of the threat’s behavior to catch, contain, and remediate.
AMP’s built-in sandboxing technology analyzes the behavior of suspicious files and correlates it against other information sources. File analysis produces detailed information to give you a better understanding of how to contain the outbreak and block future attacks.
When a file is deemed malicious, AMP drastically reduces the amount of time and resources required to investigate. It automatically provides insight into your most pressing questions, including:
With a few clicks in AMP’s browser-based management console, the file can be blocked from running on all endpoints. Cisco AMP knows every other endpoint the file has reached, so it can quarantine the file for all users. With AMP, malware remediation is surgical, with no associated collateral damage to IT systems or the business.
How to Stop and Quarantine a File with Cisco AMP:
100% centralized cloud management for security, networking, and application control.
Cisco Meraki Security Appliances can be remotely deployed in minutes using zero-touch cloud provisioning. Security settings are simple to synchronize across thousands of sites using templates. Auto VPN technology securely connects branches in 3 clicks, through an intuitive, web-based dashboard.
Every Meraki Security Appliance supports several features, like a stateful firewall and integrated Sourcefire intrusion prevention (IPS) engine, to keep networks secure. Threat definitions and filter lists are seamlessly updated, ensuring every site has bleeding-edge protection from the latest vulnerabilities and troublesome websites.
Try any Cisco Meraki product on your network.
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