Corporate Cyber Security: Part One

A basic understanding of computer networks is necessary for understanding the elements and principles of the Internet security. There are tools that can be used to reduce the number of networking attacks. In the modern world of risk to the security computers, a corporation needs to use a multilayered approach in order to protect the information located on the computer from network attacks. The difference of the national security from a corporate cyber security is in its large scale of security issues, problems that have to be solved. Weaknesses in broadly used software and hardware products can create problems at the national level, thus, requiring coordinated activities for the development of improved technologies. Besides, the lack of trained professionals is the issue of a national level concern. The national cyber security focuses on preventing and protecting against cyber attacks at a national level. It is aimed at securing information infrastructures of the USA.

A firewall is a powerful technology used for host protection at a corporation. It can reduce the risk exposure introduced by internetworking hosts, defend the network against attacks. It simply blocks access to ports, IP addresses, protocols and services to prevent the network threats. Many corporations use one of three possible types of firewalls.

1. Application gateways are the first firewalls and are known as proxy gateways. They are created from hosts which use particular software for acting as a proxy server. The application gateways are considered to be the most secure as they do not permit anything to pass by default. Before using it and the Internet one must be proxitized. However, they have a drawback – they are slow in the process.

2. Packet filtering is a tool with the help of which routers have access control lists turned on. There is little overhead in packet filtering as the access control tool is fulfilled at a lower ISO/OSI layer. Besides, a packet filtering gateway is usually faster than application gateways. Still, there are disadvantages of using it as TCP/IP has no possibilities to guarantee the correctness of the source address.

3. Application gateway and packet filtering are useful tools in a cyber security issue. However, there exist hybrid systems, which unite the security of the application layer gateways with the flexibility and speed of packet filtering. Hybrid systems are highly recommended for corporations.