Internet Security Suites, Firewalls

and Basic Data Security Principles

or - when your workstation anti-virus just isn't enough

Nothing's more fraught with broken promises, snake oil and nonsense than the anti-virus/anti-spyware market. There is more than one big-name, popular package that fails to do its duty when it comes to protecting your information system assets. Perhaps the worst thing about some of these big-name packages is that their primacy in the marketplace tends to lull unsuspecting users into a completely unwarranted and false sense of security.

Undefended? Who, Me?

Now, the absolute worst thing you can do is to leave your workstation(s) and/or servers undefended. Yet a surprising number of us do just that.  A recent study came up with the shocking statistic that fully 80% of all broadband connections are unprotected by any sort of defense against intruders, viruses, worm, Trojans and spyware. While this is generally not true of most businesses - the figure cited included residential broadband users - there are still significant numbers of small business operations that have grossly underestimated the need to adequately protect their business information assets. I know this is true because I have performed far too many postmortems - too many expensive postmortems -  on hacked business systems.

What? Me Worry?

Common excuses for not dealing with security have run along the lines of, "It's too expensive." You really think so? Not compared to the damage that results from an outbreak of a particularly nasty virus. Feel like reformatting and reinstalling most, or all of your workstations?  How much downtime can your business stand? If you've come to depend on your information system to run your business, then what's your plan when it goes down hard?

How about, "Well, nothing's ever happened here. We've never had a problem." Which is all fine and good until the business does have a problem. Which it inevitably will if you don't do something about it. And the worst sort of problem is the one that goes undetected for some length of time. Identity theft is bad enough. When the theft involves the compromise of your customers' credit card numbers and when new legislation mandates $50,000 fines per incidence, well... you get the idea. For a better idea of what I'm talking about, see the section of the site that examines some of the key issues regarding data safety and security. Well worth your time.

The best defense is...

There are a handful of industrial-grade and inexpensive products that not only do a highly effective job of protecting your systems, but they also work well together. But before we discuss these packages, it's worth noting that a workstation-level defense is by itself not sufficient. No one package will defeat every threat that comes along. Threats of all kinds emerge and evolve too quickly for any manufacturer/publisher's product to get it right 100% of the time. That's why the best protection against the myriad of threats to your data security is always going to be a layered defense. By all means, defend your workstations - that's cheap and easy to do, as an examination of the products shown below suggests. But if you can stop problems BEFORE they get into your network, you're way ahead of the game. That's where an active, aggressive hardware-based firewall / anti-virus / anti-spyware defense of your broadband connection really pays off. See the section on hardware-based firewalls, routers and security appliances for a good range of solutions to network perimeter defense. StarLAN Consulting Services is prepared to advise you regarding the best way to assemble and maintain an effective layered defense.

A Word of Caution

If one package is good, then two or three or more is better - right? Wrong. Whatever you do, don't - and I mean DON'T - install more than one internet security or anti-virus/anti-spyware package on your computer. To get to the point - if you do that, then you will slow your machine to a crawl, clobber your internet access, render your machine unstable and/or all these things. Pick one and use it. Just one. Please.