Network security in the 21st century has become much more complex than ever before. New types and sources of network security threats, always-on high-speed Internet connections, wireless networking, and much more sophisticated methods of attacking networks have made network security both more difficult to manage and more essential in todayÆs technological environment. In a nutshell, the job of network security is to ensure that people who need access to the network and its data can have that access whenever they need it, while denying access to anyone who is not authorized. However, there are many fronts on which network security is vulnerable; it is always subject to people-related, hardware-related, and software-related failures, and even when all of these elements do their jobs, it can still be vulnerable to attack from hackers who know how to get around even functioning security barriers. This paper will address the types of vulnerabilities that impact network security and the measures that can protect a network against them.
The three primary types of network protection are the same as the three primary areas where a network can be attacked. Every network needs protection against people-related, hardware-related, and software-related attack, so each of these areas of network security need to be managed carefully. To secure a network against people-related failures, good network security procedures must be implemented and put into use consistently. Network users must secure their passwords so that no one else can discover them, back up data so that it can be recovered if the network sustains an attack, put secure data in secure places on the network, know how to detect phishing and pharming, and use all network protection measures available (Curtin, 10-11). Other people-related protection measures involve good network management by the network administrator: avoiding systems with a single point of failure, staying curre...