The Demand for Network Security

With the continuous growth of the internet comes for the need of an increase in network security. Physical security in an organization has always been given the most attention which has lead to an overall decrease in security breaches. On the other hand Network Security is not always giving the attention it needs which increases the chance of security violates on the network. To help prevent violations on the network an organization should invest in a network security system. It is becoming standard practice for most enterprises and corporations to implement these tools to protect their data.
There are plenty of network security tools that are available, it all depends on what you need to protect and secure. Some programs are built into the operating systems and are designed to run on that specific OS. There are many things to look for when it comes to choosing a security application.
Network security tools are primarily geared at:
• Assessing the network
• Scanning the network for open ports
• Monitoring the network traffic for malicious packets
There are several features of these vital tools which make it perfect and suitable to use to filter and protect your network.
• These programs need to have an easy to use interface
• Port scanning has to be fast, reflexive, and flexible.
• Installation on a network has to be simple and quick.
Network firewalls are a common security tool used in large and small organizations. It is essentially a system that allows for an access control policy between networks so that malicious traffic is blocked. Firewalls will only provide protection if traffic is flowing through it. The most common example in the enterprise is the internal traffic verses external traffic. Traffic flowing from the outside to the inside should go through the firewall for protection. Traffic that flows internally from system to system will most likely not be protected by the firewall. Another type of security tools is an Intrusion Detection System (IDS). An IDS will scan the network traffic much like an Antivirus program will do and determine if it’s clean or bad traffic. The program can then drop the traffic and send an alert to a network administrator.
These types of systems are created primarily to protect the network that your organization is using. Another type of security tool that is a must have is a packet sniffer. Packet sniffers can analyze a network packet and view the details of its contents. If there are issues on the network and your high level systems are not detecting any issues, then it’s time to dig deeper and analyze the data with a packet sniffer. They also discover network packet loss or network drops which can be caused by a virus sending a flood of traffic on the network.




Do you need to monitor your network’s security? Check out Network Security Tools for a listing of security tools, utilities, guides & tips. Also see Network Monitoring Software for a list of network monitoring tools.