Network Sabotage

What is it? And why would a studio blog about it? One day offline in a multimedia/photography business can result in major revenue loss, not to mention incredible frustration and panic.

We recently experienced a hack into the network which prevented online access; or access at a very slow rate if at all possible. Frustrated to say the least the research begun; someone had set up a firewall... share the love and make sure it doesn't impact on your business.

A firewall is a piece of hardware and/or software which functions in a networked environment to prevent some communications forbidden by the security policy, analogous to the function of firewalls in building construction. A firewall is also called a Border Protection Device (BPD), especially in NATO contexts, or packet filter in BSD contexts. A firewall has the basic task of controlling traffic between different zones of trust. Typical zones of trust include the Internet (a zone with no trust) and an internal network (a zone with high trust). The ultimate goal is to provide controlled connectivity between zones of differing trust levels through the enforcement of a security policy and connectivity model based on the least privilege principle.

Proper configuration (or reverse engineering) of firewalls demands skill, and requires considerable understanding of network protocols and of computer security. Don't become a statistic of network sabotage, protect your most valuable asset.