It s a Cold, Cruel World


It's a Cold, Cruel World

You might be considering connecting your LAN to the Internet, or you might have done so already. Connecting will probably be more work than you expect (even with, or due to, my advice), but the achievement will be gratifying. After you make just a few keystrokes, a friend in Italy will be able to log on to your network. Millions of potential customers can reach you. You'll be one with the world.

I don't want to spoil your day, but the cruel fact is that, besides your customers, friends, mother, and curious, benign strangers, your computer and your LAN will also be exposed to pranksters, hackers, spammers, information bandits, thieves, and a variety of other bottom feeders and bad guys who, like anyone else, can probe, prod, and test your system. Will your network be up to the task? Even if you have a single computer only occasionally connected to the Internet by modem, you're still at risk.

By this point in the book, you are aware that network design is foremost a task of planning. It's especially true in this case: Before you connect to the Internet, you must plan for security, whether you have a single computer or a large local area network (LAN).

Explaining everything that you can and should do would be impossible. What I want to do in this chapter is give you an idea of what network security entails. I'll talk about the types of risks you'll be exposed to and the means people use to minimize this exposure; then I'll end with some tips and to-do lists. If you want to have a network or security consultant take care of implementation for you, that's great. This chapter will give you the background to understand what the consultant is doing. If you want to go it on your own, then consider this chapter to be a survey course, and your assignment is to continue to research, write, and implement a security plan.



Special Edition Using Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Special Edition Using Microsoft Windows XP Professional (3rd Edition)
ISBN: 0789732807
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 450

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