Networknsecurity Inside And Out

Network Security: Inside and Out

The internet and computer networks have been around for a long time. During the many years there have been extensive updates and new technologies that have allowed millions around the world to communicate. Networking has brought upon the "dot.com" revolution, and helped bring many small businesses to the online world. Though networking has brought many new and exciting technologies, it has also led

to a very dark side. Viruses, Spyware, and Adware are a few different malicious programs released upon businesses and home networks everyday. This problem has arisen to such a level that there is a separate division in the FBI to counter these crimes and vulnerabilities. The world relies on these networks everyday. Every time you go to the bank, or make a call on your cell phone, there is a computer network somewhere in the process being used. The security side has its own tricks of the trade to counter these criminals such as: firewalls, antivirus software, and encryption to name of few. How does network security work, and what is being done to instill protection to our businesses and home users?

A computer network is a way of linking computers in an effort to allow users to share information (Maiwald et al, 2003). Ever since the beginning of computer networks, there has been the need for security. Just like banks, and cities there are need for security to protect valuables and to keep things running smoothly. Computer networks are exactly the same way, they are in a way like a completely sophisticated city. Computer networks also need security to protect information, and data from falling into the wrong hands. To understand the how security works in the computer world, you have to first understand how and what a network is.

Today, there are basically four different ways to establish a network, each providing their own unique way of connecting multiple computers in the effort to share information. First is the power-line, which allowed users to create their networks by using only their power outlets. This meant no unnecessary re-wiring or expensive installs. Power-line networking provided speeds up to 350 kbps (kilo-bytes-per-second) which was kind of slow at the time, though very cheap. The best part of this was that all data that would flow through this network system had to be encrypted, which provided an extremely secure network. Phone-line was number to be used to create a network. It was setup through the phone-lines. This was also relatively cheap because, if you had a phone-line, you had the basics for the network. Speeds jumped up from Power-line to 10 Mbps (Mega-bits-per-second). It even supported 25 devices, which was good for a small business at the time. The third way to connect was Ethernet, which is the most widely used today. This was connected to using special cables called 'cat-5' which was just a bigger phone-line connector. This supported an unlimited amount of devices to connect between. It also provided extremely fast 100 Mbps speeds. The last network technology is a new one, called Wi-Fi. This was revolutionary because it allowed a user to connect networks without wires. It used the same radio frequencies that cordless phones used, and provided speeds that are now reaching over 125 Mbps (Maiwald et al, 2003). This increased freedom and was extremely fast. It also had a wide array of security feature at its disposal.

Now that the basics of connecting networks are understood, there were two main ways to organize all of the computers. LAN, Local Area Network, was basically a way for a number of devices to communicate that are relatively close together. This was particularly good for small workplaces, and even home users. On the other hand, What if a business needed to communicate over large areas? WAN, Wide Area Network, were used to provide the special need of the individuals that wanted to have a more geographically dispersed network. It would now allow data to be shared across large areas.

Hackers have been on the rise over the past few years, society has over analyzed their intentions on what a hacker really is and what they do. Hackers have caused billions of dollars, and have destroyed valuable information. There are many different ways to alter or gain access to a particular network system. Viruses and worms are a couple of common malicious codes used to damage network systems. So, what is a virus? A program that replicates to another program stored on the infected computer system and will erase data, which sometime leads to a hard-drive to be reformatted, causing complete data loss. Viruses are