by Ben Tasker

Created on: December 06, 2008

Very few businesses can function without a network of computers. Be they Windows or *NIX based, communication is the name of the game. Unfortunately allowing your computers to communicate with each other does have inherent risks, whether that be malware or unauthorised access.

However, if managed carefully a good security policy can dramatically lower the risk of these threats. Being a small business does not shield you from the attention of Cyber-Criminals, depending on your business area it may even make you more of a viable mark.

Your very first task in creating your secure network is to carefully draft a security policy, this policy should contain the rules that your employees must adhere to. You should consider every perceived threat when drafting your policy, no matter how unlikely it may seem. Include policies on the use of removable media, Password Management, Internet facilities and e-mail. Also make your employees that all activity will be logged and could lead to disciplinary action.

Once you have created your first draft, it's time to begin planning the network itself. It may be that you have a network in place already and are reviewing security, if so plan the security from scratch to ensure you haven't assumed that a defence is already present.

The first consideration is, does your network need to connect to a Wide Area Network, be it the Internet or a corporate one? Is it absolutely necessary? If it is, then you should consider whether the WAN is considered secure. Regardless of whether you believe it is or not, you will require a firewall, maybe even two. Whilst many would recommend software firewalls, it is generally better to purchase a hardware firewall. This is simply a dedicated unit for running a software firewall, and most are as easily configurable as Client Based firewalls. The added protection of a hardware firewall is that users will have a harder time bypassing it (Most users will fiddle with any firewall software on their PC). A hardware firewall should be placed at your networks 'entry point', that is the link between your LAN and the WAN. This will help prevent an intrusion getting onto your system at all.

Alternatively you can use client based firewalls, and it would be wise to consider them as an additional measure. Some software firewalls will cause problems when you make changes however. If, for example, your company were to utilise a new bit of software that communicated on port 1078, you would need to configure each and every

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