What is Network Security and how does it work?
Network Infrastructure Security is one of the most common and important security measures for organizations. It refers to protecting your company’s database with an advanced security protocol to reduce the risk of data theft, modifications, deletion, and access by an unauthorized user.
Network Infrastructure Security solutions typically mean controlling access into a company’s database, using VPN technology to secure the network, antivirus or firewall software to protect files and data from malicious threats, and more. And most importantly, network infrastructure security makes sure that no attacker can gain access to your company’s confidential information. To know how NIS works and its benefits, you have to read this post from start to bottom.
Details about Network Infrastructure and its Security
You need to understand a few things about the network infrastructure to know what network security will protect. To begin with, there are a few components that make up network infrastructure. They are hardware, routers, switches, cables, LAN cards, etc. These network devices have a software program that helps the devices operate on the network. The software section includes operating systems, firewalls, management systems, threat detection systems, and more. And services are another part of the network infrastructure which involve IP addresses, wireless protocols, DSL certificates, etc.
These components of a network are vulnerable and attract malicious threats from all over the world. However, network infrastructure security can protect these components and eliminate threats in real-time. NFS can provide you with advanced security options to fight against various external as well as internal network attacks.
There are many factors that can make your network infrastructure vulnerable, and that includes malware, unauthorized access, service denial, spam, etc. While a malicious third party attempting to access your company’s database may be an external vulnerability, the deletion and modification of necessary files may be internal. However, a good network security system can handle all of that.
Network infrastructure security has various types. Let’s look into that before going into further details.
Types of Network Infrastructure Security
Security measures applied by organizations depend on the kind of infrastructure they use. Security measures can be physically or virtually based. The following are some examples:
- Firewalls monitor the traffic that is transacting through the network. Firewalls typically consist of both hardware and software resources, and they can block unauthorized access to your network and perform data transfer safely.
- Antiviruses can eliminate the risk of having your network infected by keyloggers, viruses, spyware, spam, Url threats, and more.
- VPNs or virtual private networks can encrypt the virtual connection and transfer it through a secret tunnel to provide you with a secure and private data transfer on the internet.
- And finally, detection systems identify intrusion on the network and take actions against them in real-time. A secure detection system can defend and report potential intrusions on your network.
However, there can be other ways to keep your network safe. But this list demonstrates most of the common and advanced ways that companies follow. These security measures work in a particular way in the network infrastructure.
How does Network Infrastructure Security Protect your Network?
Network infrastructure security requires a series of ongoing practices to keep the infrastructure safe. And for that, the Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Cybersecurity recommend you to follow some different approaches that will help you protect your network properly. Here are some of the methods to implement:
Segment and Separate Networks and their Functions
You can pay attention to your entire network infrastructure at the same time. But you can also separate the entire infrastructure into different layouts and keep an eye on them at different times. If you employ different hardware and network components to watch every part of the network then it will be easier to track potential security problems or threats.
Using routers and other hardware components, such as switches, you can create boundaries within a network and filter traffic. You will be notified about each device’s movements at their assigned locations or segments and they will be able to restrict attacks on their own if necessary. Separating networks can also be done via software tools rather than hardware such as routers.
Limit Communications in the Network
When you are not limiting communications within a network, it can make the network vulnerable to intruders. Therefore, make sure you restrict peer-to-peer communications so that they cannot move freely from one host to another host. This will prevent the attackers from establishing a secure attack on your network by creating a trojan or installing malicious software.
Strong Network Devices
When you have robust network devices, it will enhance your network’s security. Try to stick to the industry standard devices and services to secure your network servers. Also, advanced routers, powerful passwords, backing up configurations, limiting physical access to the network devices, and occasionally testing the network’s settings can help you keep up with the network’s security measures.
Don’t Allow Unnecessary Access to Network Devices
Not only to the virtual services and resources, but you should also restrict access to the network infrastructure devices with different multi-factor authentication (MFA) features such as managing admin credentials, privilege access, etc. This will ensure that only authorized users can access the devices and use them.
Using the right network infrastructure security management provides multiple benefits to your company.
What Are the Benefits of Network Infrastructure Security?
When you implement NIS rightly, it will provide you with the following benefits:
- It will reduce the cost of operating the network because the resources can be managed by different users who don’t process any threats.
- Site licenses are cheaper than getting licenses for every machine.
- Sharing files across different networks internally can boost the productivity of your employees and users.
- Your internal communications, such as email communications and chat systems, won’t be accessed by the attackers.
- Files and data can be protected more than ever.
- You can back up your data to the local servers to protect your information when something goes wrong.
The biggest job of network security is to protect your network from hackers and attackers from all over the world. Network in fracture uses a group of devices such as routers, switches, firewalls, servers, load-balancers, storage systems, etc. that allows attackers to enter into the database in your network. As long as you have these devices and a network, you can expect certain people to intrude but to reduce the risk; you need network security.
If a hacker can access the router, then he can also monitor and modify the traffic on your network. And the hacker can also gain control from the internal routing and switches. If he does so, he can modify and monitor the traffic from communicating to other hosts. However, if you take care of your network’s security in the first place, then these problems won’t appear.
Conclusion
Network security is a combination of multiple things such as malware protection, password protection, remote access protection, device encryptions, monitoring the logins, etc. And it is also a multi-layered defense system against outside attacks on your network.
The multiple network security layers include the physical layer, data link layer, network layer, transport layer, session layer, presentation, and application layer.
The physical layer includes network devices such as repeater, hub, and network interface controller (NIC).
The data link layer includes switches and bridges. The network layer manages the job of routing network messages through the router.
The transport layer applies transmission mechanisms, including fingerprints, etc.
The session layer builds a secure connection between hosts or network devices.
The presentation layer is responsible for transferring data securely to the applications. And finally, the application layer communicates with the network securely.
That’s how the entire network infrastructure system works. To prevent attacks or reduce vulnerabilities, you need to take care of each of these network layers and services. We already told you most of the things about network infrastructure security in this post, but if you need more information, you can read our other articles in this section or comment below.