Maintaining a Secure Network

Maintaining a secure network connected to the Internet is becoming more difficult as time goes on. New viruses are released daily, higher machine speeds and more sophisticated and automated tools mean that hackers can scan and attack wide sections of the Internet at a time. More consumer broadband connections mean that there is an increasing source of relatively vulnerable high performance computers available to be harvested as 'bots' and used as proxies for illicit activity. The increasing complexity of current operating systems also means more vulnerabilities available for exploitation. Faced with this increasing threat from the Internet virtually all connected organizations are now actively engaged in some level of IT security activities. According to the 2003 FBI/CSI Computer Crime and Security Survey 99% of organizations use virus protection and 98% use firewalls.