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Today's businesses are under increasing pressure to stay in close personal touch with their customers. As a result, more companies are establishing branch offices and remote outposts. But what is a boon for sales presents a host of challenges for a Network/System Administrator or Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
Mobile and remote workers of all types need high-quality connections to the Internet and to their corporate networks. They need connections from branch offices, homes, airports, hotels and other locations around the world. And they need connections over a growing number of access technologies: Ethernet, WI-FI, cable, DSL, dial-up and more. This truly becomes a security challenge as network managers scramble to meet these needs: they face escalating costs, questionable security, diminished productivity and endless support headaches. Remote security challenges have become quite complex due to the intricacies of modern networks and the rate at which threats change and attacks improve, not to mention the ever-evolving network services necessary to operate business. However, remote office security has become very important to corporations simply because in today's business world companies have no choice but to open their networks to the Internet!
A remote office typically doesn't have the resources to focus time and effort on Internet security. But just because it's small and far from headquarters, don't imagine it's not an attractive target for attacks by viruses, worms and criminals. In fact, it may be more attractive as the "weakest link" in the network system.
With the complexity of threats and attacks evolving, how does this affect the remote office as it too evolves? Today the remote office could consist of a branch office; a home office; or perhaps one salesperson connecting a laptop through the wireless network at Starbucks or the airport while awaiting the next flight - making it more difficult to define a network perimeter. This multidimensional state or ubiquity - of any place/anywhere - really complicates managing security. These mobile users can be easily compromised or pick up the latest circulating virus, and without adequate safeguards they could inadvertently bring down the entire network next time they connect.
With all the changes in technology and the ubiquity of the remote office continually evolving, the CISO has specific challenges when setting up a branch location, including: avoiding network and server downtime, avoiding excessive calls to the help desk, eliminating security breaches, being able to pass regulatory audits in compliance with federal and state laws, keeping up with security updates and patches for all branch locations and mobile users, and ensuring connectivity for all business units - to stop the threats but keep traffic flowing.
With all that to manage, working with an IT budget that has most likely remained flat from year to year while security costs have risen about 28% annually, some companies choose "checkbox" intrusion protection or legacy technologies instead of real vulnerability-based preemptive protection.
Current Security Methods are Inadequate
Businesses today may have a false sense of security regarding their branch locations and mobile users, or they may recognize the lack of security but not know what can be done. Many businesses today rely on antivirus and firewalls for protection; but those older legacy technologies simply aren't enough to protect these branch offices. For one thing, businesses may believe there is no "reason" for hackers to attack their branches. But here's why a company would be under attack even if it had "nothing valuable" to protect:
- Hackers are using any company they can compromise to build a network of machines they can control. They aren't interested in that company specifically; they are interested in using any machine for a future attack. This puts the company at risk from a liability perspective and drains their networking and computing resources, so they end up spending more money on bandwidth and computers to keep up with the hacker's illegal use of their resources.
- Hackers are using the automation available in computers to compromise as many machines as possible looking for "something" valuable. So even though one company's assets may not be as valuable as another company's, that isn't the question. If you leave a stereo on the street with no protection, or have diamonds in a vault, which one do you think will be stolen first?
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