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Scenario: You work in a corporate environment in which you are, at least partially, responsible for network security. You have implemented a firewall, virus and spyware protection, and your computers are all up to date with patches and security fixes. You sit there and think about the lovely job you have done to make sure that you will not be hacked.

You have done, what most people think, are the major steps towards a secure network. This is partially correct. What about the other factors?

Have you thought about a social engineering attack? What about the users who use your network on a daily basis? Are you prepared in dealing with attacks by these people?

Believe it or not, the weakest link in your security plan is the people who use your network. For the most part, users are uneducated on the procedures to identify and neutralize a social engineering attack. What’s going to stop a user from finding a CD or DVD in the lunch room and taking it to their workstation and opening the files? This disk could contain a spreadsheet or word processor document that has a malicious macro embedded in it. The next thing you know, your network is compromised.

This problem exists particularly in an environment where a help desk staff reset passwords over the phone. There is nothing to stop a person intent on breaking into your network from calling the help desk, pretending to be an employee, and asking to have a password reset. Most organizations use a system to generate usernames, so it is not very difficult to figure them out.

Your organization should have strict policies in place to verify the identity of a user before a password reset can be done. One simple thing to do is to have the user go to the help desk in person. The other method, which works well if your offices are geographically far away, is to designate one contact in the office who can phone for a password reset. This way everyone who works on the help desk can recognize the voice of this person and know that he or she is who they say they are.

Why would an attacker go to your office or make a phone call to the help desk? Simple, it is usually the path of least resistance.  There is no need to spend hours trying to break into an electronic system when the physical system is easier to exploit. The next time you see someone walk through the door behind you, and do not recognize them, stop and ask who they are and what they are there for. If you do this, and it happens to be someone who is not supposed to be there, most of the time he will get out as fast as possible. If the person is supposed to be there then he will most likely be able to produce the name of the person he is there to see.

I know you are saying that I am crazy, right? Well think of Kevin Mitnick. He is one of the most decorated hackers of all time. The US government thought he could whistle tones into a telephone and launch a nuclear attack. Most of his hacking was done through social engineering. Whether he did it through physical visits to offices or by making a phone call, he accomplished some of the greatest hacks to date. If you want to know more about him Google his name or read the two books he has written.

It’s beyond me why people try and dismiss these types of attacks. I guess some network engineers are just too proud of their network to admit that they could be breached so easily. Or is it the fact that people don’t feel they should be responsible for educating their employees? Most organizations don’t give their IT departments the jurisdiction to promote physical security. This is usually a problem for the building manager or facilities management. None the less, if you can educate your employees the slightest bit; you may be able to prevent a network breach from a physical or social engineering attack.

In the real world, businesses come in every size, from self-employed entrepreneurs like me to mega malls like Wal-Mart.

On the Internet, companies come in every size, too, from a stand-alone ebook sales page with webmaster and owner all in one, to 300 pound gorilla like Amazon, with over a million pages, who requires the entire population of a small country to serve as webmaster.

If your site is a single page, it is its own network. But if your site is any bigger, and you have plans to grow, it is a network or is fast becoming one. You need network monitoring.

Most ecommerce webmasters are at least somewhat familiar with website monitoring. Many use a website monitoring service or software to keep track of “uptime” and “downtime”.

At your local shopping mall, serious business requires more than just knowing when the front doors are open and when they are closed. Serious ecommerce needs to know more than just when the site is accessible. That is what network monitoring is all about.

What Network Monitoring Monitors

Chances are, your e-business owns one of the following, or uses one of the following remotely:

DNS servers: These are used to translate your site name, like www.URL.com, to the numbers called “IP addresses” that computers understand. If DNS servers are not working properly, end-users will not be able to find your site and will get an error. Usually only an external or remote monitoring service will detect such a problem.

An FTP server: File Transfer Protocol servers are used to help you
exchange files with remote users. If you use FTP, a monitoring
service can make sure it is always up and running.

POP3 and SMTP servers: These are used for exchanging emails. If you are using email, chances are you are using SMTP and POP3. If your SMTP server is down, everyone who sends you email will receive an error, stating that your mail server is down and cannot accept incoming email. To say that the impression this leaves your customers is bad would be an understatement. If your POP3 server is down, you will be unable to retrieve email from your mailbox. Once again, only external monitoring will prevent such a problem.

Firewalls: Many businesses use firewalls to protect their internal network from un-authorized traffic, such as spyware, viruses and sabotage by competitors. Furthermore, a firewall is your first line of defense. If your firewall goes down, your whole network may actually become inaccessible from outside. In other words, if you host your own web site and mail servers, those will become
inaccessible to the outside world if your firewall goes down. Once again, remote network monitoring is required to detect that a problem exists and quickly get it repaired.

Internet connections: Users come to your network from multiple backbones, depending on the company they use to connect to the Internet and their location. It is important to insure that your connection performs well for each user. A remote monitoring service can ping your networks from multiple locations around the world, thus testing most major routes to your web server or network. Before hiring a network monitoring service, check to see that they have both your customer geography and the Internet backbone layout covered.

Very few websites of any size and functionality are anything less than a complete network, and many networks rely on servers in different parts of the world.

A good network monitoring service can ensure, as a base, that all servers are properly functioning, that data can be sent to and received from each server, and that each function sharing the server responds as required. An advanced network monitoring service can even remotely monitor the temperature of your servers.

What you need to monitor depends on how extensive your network is. A network monitoring expert can help you determine what needs monitoring. If you own the servers, or are remotely hosted on dedicated servers, you most likely need everything monitored. If your site is hosted on shared servers, you might need fewer functions monitored.

One of the best known brands on the market are Dell laptops. Of course, this comes from a lot of publicity. But their quality goes a long way to explain why they are so large in the IT world.

Take, for example, take the new Dell Inspiron 6000th There is a high performance laptop, called the Sonoma chipset, the latest features of Intel have done. Well, this chipset is strictly for laptops, so that specially designed to make sure that your laptop works as well as possible. This includes the best performance of the battery life, faster graphics card for games and multimedia and wireless connectivity.

Regarding wireless technology goes, these Dell notebooks pack the latest technology. For example, they offer a Bluetooth option for business users there. Of course there are the standard 10/100 Ethernet cards and wireless access, so you can use your card in the field of wireless access at home, at your local coffee shop ar work.

Here are some other accessories that complement the connectivity of these computers. It has an IEEE 1394 FireWire, an S-Video port and four USB ports. Well, if this were not enough, the Inspiron 6000 also has a slot for Secure Digital memory cards.

Well, no matter how many digital cameras, music players, personal digital assistants (PDA) or mobile, you have your Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop with sufficient access to them all.

This computer also has a big brain! You can choose either a 1.30 GHz Intel Celeron or Pentium 1.60 GHz. Go as far as hard drives, but also in a variety of areas from 30 GB to 80 GB You can also use the package with the computer scanners such as dual-layer DVD burner or CD recordable / DVD.

What does this mean for the layman? All these numbers and abbreviations mean only one thing, whatever you need for your computer, there are Dell laptops that are perfect for the job.

I have nothing but Dell computers in my office was like my home and I’ll continue to buy them and recommend them. Not only because they have made great computers, but because that Dell stands behind its products and prices
as a service.

Just to give you an example of a service from Dell, I bought a Dell computer last year for my office, one of many. It has a computer develops a problem with the DVD player. I have read, DVD’s, but I could not burn. I called support they responded very quickly and while I was on the phone with them, the technician had to do some tests. The DVD player was defective. The technician offered to send me a new device for Next Day Air, or a technician come to my office. I chose the latter, and the technicians appeared within 24 hours, replace the unit and had running. Now, I asked, I would not have been better or faster service.

manage a small or home business on the leased space, so it can be extremely profitable, can not be established in the same style as an important seat. The use of standard desktop computers full-size in such an institution is not possible, because it takes too much space and is too bulky for tight spaces. To cope with such a situation, or just portable desknotes button.

Desknotes are systems that can be used alternately as a standard desktop PC, but also provides portability to purchase. Desknotes have performance levels similar to a desktop PC and take up less space. In addition, to keep costs to a minimum, it is possible under the desknotes a LAN, where a single laptop to be connected to the Internet and have access to all laptops connected to the network to install together. This also applies to devices connected to the central real laptop, WiFi, laptops can all use the same device. Thus, for a small office with three or more laptops, LAN (Local Area Network) is certainly a blessing.

LANs usually span a building or a small group of buildings. Connecting a LAN with many other over telephone lines and radio waves is called WAN (Wide Area Network). A local network that uses radio waves to communicate is called WLAN (Wireless Land Area Network). There are several advantages to a wireless LAN. One is its flexibility. Radio waves can penetrate walls almost any surface, and does not require, miles and miles of cables, and therefore a clean free atmosphere. Wireless LAN can almost invisible!

Another advantage is that wireless networks are extremely easy to use. Most laptops come with built-in wireless. So all you have to do is connect the power supply and ensure that you have a wireless network card. WLANs are very difficult. If a database is separated, it is possible to use another laptop base, and be physically moved in the range of another wireless network. The prices are very low these days for the WLAN, and it is not surprising that the choice for home networks.

However, because nothing in this world is perfect, works wirelessly lead some drawbacks. Anyone can use a laptop in the vicinity of a wireless hack and stored in the wireless traffic. This is a safety issue by the loss of privacy. While radio waves can penetrate almost any surface, too many obstacles in the way of how buildings can affect the transmission. Another drawback is the speed of data transmission. How many laptops to share the same bandwidth, the speed of data transfer are much lower in a WLAN. In addition, wireless data rates to fall on the strength or signal to noise ratio.

Wireless LAN is comfortable, where mobility is required, and is the only choice in old buildings where cables can not be installed. Companies generally offer cables for fixed Wireless LAN offices and for users who have no fixed place. At the end should not be installed prior to WLAN setup into account all factors relating to your office or home.