Someone recently sent this article to me asking my opinion. The author has some great points – most are basic, yet these 10 basic things can dramatically improve your security. But one of them deserves extra attention – and a second deserves some review.  

Let’s look at the second first – it’s the one on using the right firewall. Most IT Services providers recommend and provide firewalls either for purchase or as a service. The thing about firewalls is, they are not, “Set it and forget it” devices.  Today’s firewalls are much different than the one you might have bought 10 years ago…if you’re still sitting behind that old firewall from the early part of 2000, it’s time to upgrade…

One upgrade you’ll want is the ability to inspect traffic in and out.  That brings me to #9 on the list – some type of monitoring function. It’s proven every day, you can’t keep the hackers out. There’s just too many holes open to allow traffic (such as email and web browsing) through…the answer is, limiting in and out traffic, and adding that inspection element. The article recommends hiring – but don’t! It would be like hiring your own alarm monitoring service, but worse. Expensive, hard to keep trained, and impossible to keep busy…

In summary, today’s security demands strong authentication capabilities, technology to reduce who gets in and what goes out, inspecting all traffic inside and coming and going, and training your people. Do these few things and your security will be great (although never 100% safe).