Besides protecting your incoming email, authenticating your users and authorizing access you will also worry about how to secure your servers. One of the ways of securing your servers is to build a moat around them, to make it difficult for entry or otherwise hinder access to your servers.

To do this you can build a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) within your network. The first Demilitarized Zone created was the strip of land between North Korea and South Korea after the cease fire of July 17, 1953. 

In a computer environment, a DMZ is an area of your network that sits between your secured protected internal LAN and the unprotected unsecured internet.

Continue reading Why You Need a DMZ

The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) has announced their annual campaign for cyber-security awareness.

Awareness, more than anything, is the most important weapon in securing your enterprises and ensuring that malware doesn’t sneak in through your email servers. Awareness? Doesn’t everybody know about the dangers lurking in cyberspace by now? What we folks in the IT business take for granted is often unknown or ignored by ordinary users. When we get emails from a deposed general of a third world country, asking for assistance in moving $40 million into the US, and offering a percentage for the service, our immediate reaction is to simply delete the email. It’s a painfully obvious scam to most of us and we pay it no attention. But yet, they keep coming in every day. Why do people keep sending out these pathetic attempts to get our bank account numbers? Simple. Because not everybody is aware that it is a scam.

Continue reading Confusion over cyber-security