"You Need MORE Than A Firewall To Protect Yourself!  Learn The Truth About Firewalls And How To REALLY Protect Your Network From Attack."
 

By
Stephen Worden
 

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I was right in the middle of this.

The attack started at about two in the afternoon.  The email systems of a well-known online commerce site were being bombarded with messages coming from a computer across the country.  There was so much incoming mail that our mail server was rapidly running out of disk space.  None of our employees could read their mail because the server was bogged down.

The Internet connection was getting clobbered, too.  Mail traffic was sucking up all of our bandwidth.  Worse yet, our customers were getting booted off our servers -- no one could stay connected.

This situation would be a problem for anyone but for a major e-commerce site, this was a disaster!

However, in FIVE MINUTES I had things back to normal.  I identified where the attack was coming from, inserted a rule in the firewall to block the source, and started cleaning up the mail server.

But that's not the end of the story.  Four minutes later -- just about the time our shoppers returned -- another attack hit us!

For the next two hours I battled a hacker determined to destroy my business.

Learn more about this attack and learn how to stop them by giving us a call at
(302) 999-1899...
 

            Technology Secret #5          

    Firewalls Don't Stop Hackers   

The only way to make your company completely safe from attack is to disconnect from the Internet entirely.  Any Internet connection carries the potential for problems.

Thought your firewall protected you?  The American Heritage dictionary defines a firewall as "a fireproof wall used as a barrier to prevent the spread of fire."  A barrier.

But in technology terms, a "firewall" is more like a sieve.  It blocks some stuff, but lets other stuff through.  It's supposed to work that way.  Hey, you want your email to go through, right?

Depending on how the firewall is configured, it may not let in much.  But even that can wipe you out.  If you don't block email access then you could get bombed like I was.  If a hacker has a fatter Internet connection than you do (more bandwidth), he can effectively take you "off the air" with a Denial Of Service attack.

What can you do about it?  It's pretty easy, really.  Follow the same steps I did in the opening story.  You'll need to learn a few things about networking, a few things about your firewall, and how to recognize when you have a problem.

We can teach this to you or your staff.  Give us a call today.
 

            Technology Secret #6          

    How To Hide Your Entire Network   
        WITHOUT Using A Firewall      

I love the collaborative nature of the Internet.  People all over the world can work together on projects.

Another thing I love about the Internet is that REALLY SMART PEOPLE thought it up.  They took a phenomenally difficult problem, broke it into pieces, and made it work.  And they keep on improving it!

Long ago a group of these brilliant grad students [and professionals] realized that companies needed computer addresses for their own private use.  They talked it over, thought about it, then wrote a paper requesting everyone else's comments.

That paper (and others) describe Private Address Space.  Every computer on a network must have a unique address.  Private addresses are regular computer addresses that work in every way, shape, and form...except that they CANNOT be transmitted ("routed") over the Internet.  They are totally and completely PRIVATE!

What is the point to having addresses that don't work on the Internet?  In a word, PROTECTION.  Any messages originating from a private address CANNOT be transmitted over the Internet.  And the reverse is true also--no messages from the Internet can be transmitted to a computer using a private address.  Rules built into Internet hardware block messages from passing.

Still don't get it!?  Wondering why is this important?  It is important because it is a way for you to hide your entire network.  When you use Private Address Space your computers cannot be directly attacked because they can't be detected from outside of your company.

This diagram will help --

All of the computers in the Private Address Space above can see each other, share files, printers, and so forth but they cannot be seen from the outside world.

Yet they can still access any site on the Internet.  Through a technique called Network Address Translation each computer in the Private Address Space can reach the entire Internet while remaining 'hidden' from prying eyes!

What happens is that the router changes the "To" and "From" parts of the messages so that the PCs remain hidden.  When an Internet site responds, the router remembers who sent the original message, and forwards the response to the correct PC.  This way the only address seen by the Internet is the external address of the router -- none of the computers are ever exposed.

I really want you to get this.  I want make sure you understand Network Address Translation, why it's important, and how to take advantage of it.  Give us a call!