Security management practices followed in home and small businesses

As there are different kinds of networks and different scales, there are different types of security management for them. In this article we shall talk about how security management is done in the home and small businesses. Given that the complexity is lower in these cases, only basic security is required for a small office or at home. When you compare this with higher scales, where a lot of effort and maintenance is required for the large businesses and large institutions. In the home and small businesses, regularly used hardware and software is used (and not the sophisticated ones when compared to the sophisticated hardware and software that is used for the prevention of spamming, hacking and other kinds of malicious attacks in larger installations). Here we list some basic points for security management at home and small office:
- A basic firewall can be installed or even a unified threat management system can be used.
- A basic antivirus software will do the task if you are working in the windows environment (as long as regular data patches and software updates are installed).
- Other software that can be installed for security include anti – spyware programs. A number of anti – virus and anti – spyware software are available in the market.
- If you are using a wireless connection, you must take care to secure your system with a robust password. A number of security methods are supported by the wireless devices, so try to use the strongest of those methods such as the AES, WPA2. A wide range of devices are supported by the TKIP. But they can only be used in the cases where there is no compliance with the AES.
- While using wireless networks, the default SSID name of the network must be changed. Another security measure that can be taken is to disable the SSID broadcast as this is not required for the home use. This can be easily bypassed by the use of modern technology and if the attacker has some knowledge regarding how the wireless traffic can be detected.
- You can enable the MAC address filtering for keeping track of all the MAC devices that are on that network connected to your router. Even though strictly this is not a security feature, it does can be used for limiting and monitoring the DHCP address pool for the attackers by both AP association and exclusion. However, it does make for more settings to be done by the home or small business, which can start to become complex.
- Static IP addresses can be assigned to the devices connected to the network. This is done for complementing the other security features and to make the AP less desirable to the attackers.
- The ICMP ping on the router must be disabled.
- You can even review the logs of the router and the firewall for the identification of any abnormal traffic or connection if any is there.
- Passwords must be set for all the accounts (and not common passwords such as pass1234, etc; make these hard to guess with a combination of upper and lower case letters, number and special characters). You can set these up randomly - for example, one of my passwords is 5Gtf$&^hsTF23%3G. Such random passwords cannot be guessed and more sophisticated techniques would need to be used to break such passwords (and don't use the same passwords for multiple services).
- If you are using a windows operating system, you can create multiple accounts for the family members to limit all the activities.
- Children of the family must be given lessons about the information security.

Security management is about identifying the important assets of the user that of course includes the information assets and checking whether the policies protecting these assets are implemented properly. It is also about protecting these assets from loss. It identifies the critical assets and focuses on protecting them first. The potential threats to the system are assessed. Then measures are taken for eliminating or minimizing these threats. The security risks are managed by the virtue of the risk management principles. It involves identification of the risks, assessment of the effectiveness of the control strategies, determination of the consequences. The risks are identified by means of the impact they can have. The identified risks are classified and appropriate response is selected for each. 

What are the security problems faced by a network?

Making mistakes concerning the network security is very common. The same mistakes are repeated again and again. These problems cannot be solved without changing our working methods. In this article we discuss about some common security problems that are faced by a network.

ØUsing weak and non-complex passwords for accessing the network: 

- Brute forcing is an old school exploit to which many of the system network administrators are open to. 

- The very famous captcha technology has been implemented for correcting this vulnerability of the network security passwords. 

- In the common captcha, the user is required to type in the digits or the letters that are displayed on the screen in some sort of distorted image. 

- This technology has been designed to prevent the network to be accessed by unwanted internet bots.

- However, this is not as safe as it looks. 

- It just gives a false sense to the network admins for countering the brute forcing. 

- Complex password is the solution for this problem. 

- For creating a complex password, more than seven characters need to be combined with special characters and numbers. 

- Apart from the creation of the complex passwords, a password expiration system has to be implemented. 

- This system is for reminding the users for changing their passwords. 

- Also, care should be taken regarding the reuse of the passwords. 

- Cycling of the passwords should not be allowed.

Ø Using server application or software that is outdated: 

- The patches are released by the companies from time to time for ensuring that the system does not become vulnerable to the various threats. 

- Also, new exploits and threats are posed by the hackers that can harm the network if the patches are not properly used. 

- For ensuring the network administrator is kept informed of the new threats, the software or the applications have to be updated regularly.  

Ø Web cookies: 

- Even though the viruses and malware cannot be introduced in to the network through cookies, these cookies can be tracked by some third party cookies for compiling the records of the browsing histories of the individuals. 

- The cookies that are not encrypted pose a major threat because they make the system vulnerable to the cross site scripting (XSS) attacks, thus putting your privacy at risk. 

- The open cookies can provide access to the cookies with the log-in data which can be used by hackers for intruding in to your systems. 

- The solution to this problem is to use the encrypted cookies along with an encoded expiration time. 

- The admins might ask the users to re-log-in before accessing important network directories.

Ø Plain hashes: 

- Hashing is the technique used for indexing and retrieval purposes in the database. 

- In most of the encryption algorithms, the plain hashes are mostly used. 

- A type of encryption is the salt that might be added to the hashes for making the creation of a look-up table that might assist the brute force or directory attacks extremely difficult or let’s say almost impractical. 

- But this works only when large salt is used. 

- Usually a pre-computed look up table might not be used by the attacker in exploitation of the network. 

- This makes the network security system even more complex.

- So even if the attacker is able to break into your system, he won’t be able to access the information from the database. 

- The encryption key should be kept hidden.

Ø Shared web hosting: 

- This service is used by the websites that reside on one same server. 

- Each site is given its own partition. 

- This is economically feasible for most of the systems. 

- But here if the attacker breaches in to system of one website, he can get into other website’s security systems too.