Network Security Best Practices

According to the National Cyber Security Alliance, as many as 60% of small and medium businesses fail within six months of a cyberattack. While larger businesses may be better-suited to weather the storm, cyberattacks have been hugely damaging to companies as well-recognized as Target, Equifax, and JPMorgan Chase.

Network security is one of the most important ways that your business can protect itself against hackers. While it’s just one tool in the cybersecurity toolbox, good network security is fundamental to keeping attackers out.

In this article, we’ll explore some of the fundamental concepts of network security, along with a few best practices for keeping your corporate network safe from hackers.

What Is Network Security?

Network security encompasses protecting networks and network hardware against attacks. It does not necessarily cover the security of devices utilising the network, however—that’s the job of endpoint security.

Depending on the size of your company and the industry in which you operate, the process of securing your network differs. Good network security detects anomalies, authenticates users, segregates devices, and prevents infected endpoints from compromising the whole network.

Network security involves more than just firewalls and routers—it also includes activity monitoring, authentication, encryption, and other techniques.

Why Is Network Security Important?

Your corporate network is what stands between your company’s data and the outside world. For that reason, keeping your network secure and free from malicious devices or software is critical to protecting your information.

In addition to stopping threats from the external Internet, your network provides valuable intelligence about endpoint devices. Network security solutions can detect symptoms of malware and suspicious activity, even when on-device anti-malware software fails to raise the alarm.

Neglecting network security is very irresponsible, given the high cost of a security breach. Luckily, securing your network isn’t rocket science.

Network Security Basics

IT professionals generally have a few goals when securing a network:

• Prevent external intruders from accessing internal resources.
• Decrease the damage that a compromised device can cause.
• Detect malware, compromised users, and insider threats quickly.
• Protect the privacy of communications on the network.

To that end, network engineers and security professionals use a combination of hardware (like firewalls), software (like network anti-malware systems), and policies (like requiring all users to be authenticated).

Network Security Best Practices Checklist

While the exact processes to secure an internal network differ from company to company, some best practices apply to nearly every situation.

Keep an Eye on Traffic: Monitoring and Logging
From insider threats to hacked user accounts, lots of security issues can be discovered by monitoring and analysing network usage. For example, a device suddenly uploading data at full speed 24/7 is cause for concern. It could be data exfiltration or just someone sharing video footage. Either way, by monitoring network usage, companies can investigate before it’s too late.

Monitoring and logging can be done with the help of an intrusion detection system. Depending on the organisation’s network infrastructure, this may take the shape of software or a physical device.

Apply the Principle of Least Privilege
To prevent a compromised device, account, or person from causing significant damage, security professionals employ the principle of least privilege. In network security, this means giving each device as little access as possible to other devices. As an example, shared files on a network file system should only be accessible to those who need access to do their jobs.

Enforcing the principle of least privilege requires a good authentication setup. Organisations that already verify user identity on all network resources have the capability to lock down these resources with ease.

Use Encryption, Even on Internal Sites
Encryption keeps data from being viewed or modified in transit across a network. To ensure that a malicious or compromised device cannot view every piece of information transmitted on the network, companies should make sure that they use in-transit encryption. For websites, this comes in the form of HTTPS, which uses the TLS encryption standard to secure data in motion.

Many companies make the mistake of not using HTTPS on intranet sites. In their view, all devices on the internal network are trusted—an assumption that breaks down as more devices are added. Although using HTTPS internally is slightly more complicated than using it externally, the security benefits are significant, especially on larger networks.

Update Everything
Every piece of IT infrastructure used at your company will have security vulnerabilities at some point. If companies fail to update networking equipment, servers, and endpoints like laptops and smartphones, hackers can gain access much more easily than on a fully-patched network.

Automated remote management technology is a great way to enforce timely software updates. Mobile device management, a common strategy in endpoint security, has analogs in network security as well: routers, switches, and firewalls can all be remotely managed and updated.

Segregate Device Types and Access Levels
Practically all network equipment has the capability to split a physical network into multiple isolated subnets. This security feature can make it impossible for a hacked device on one subnet to access other devices or data on other parts of the network.

With the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) products in companies, network segregation is especially useful. Many IoT products are concerningly easy to compromise, so they should be kept on a section of the network that contains no critical data or hardware.

Control Privileged Users
As network infrastructure grows with new applications, servers and network devices, companies can struggle to control, manage and audit user access.

Privileged Access Management tools enable companies to control privileged users such as system administrators, contractors and third parties and centralise access to network devices and servers. As well as increasing security by enabling a single access gateway, administrators can also monitor and record all connections and activities for change tracking, audits or training.

Automate Network Compliance
With numerous internal and external network security standards to consider, the ability to automate network audits has become a priority for a lot of organisations. Standards such as PCI DSS, SOX, NIS, HIPAA and ISO27001 all have individual compliance requirements that have to be implemented and monitored, which can be time consuming and a strain on resources.

Many network audit tools and checklists still require manual configuration to ensure that security compliance standards are met. Automated compliance monitoring can save time and simplify compliance audit procedures.

Takeaways

Network security is a crucial part of any organisation’s cybersecurity arsenal. Cybersecurity at the network level is tasked with keeping intruders out and stopping attacks from compromised devices within.

Despite its importance, many companies fail to allocate adequate resources to network security. However, good network security is a sort of insurance policy against a wide variety of expensive and damaging cyberattacks, so it pays to invest in this type of protection.

A variety of strategies—ranging from those as simple as updating infrastructure in a timely manner to more complex tasks like logging traffic patterns and automating compliance checks —can seriously improve security on corporate networks.