Network Security
The increasing importance of network security
As computer networks have grown larger and begun to carry much more sensitive data, network security has become increasingly more important. Corporations are becoming e-businesses: using intranets to promote employee collaboration and extranets to exchange data with resellers, distributors, suppliers and partners.
Protecting corporate information assets has taken on a whole new meaning with the rise of communication over the public network. Security is emerging as the essential element that must be woven into the fabric of a corporate network, bringing together critical resources such as the infrastructure, systems, applications and users
Network security consists of the provisions made in an underlying computer network infrastructure, policies adopted by the network administrator to protect the network and the network-accessible resources from unauthorized access and the effectiveness (or lack) of these measures combined together
Securing network infrastructure is ensuring any weaknesses in networks are minimised, hardening networks against a multitude of threats and only allowing authorised users' access. By taking preventive measures, network security attempts to secure the access to individual computers--the network itself--thereby protecting the computers and other shared resources such as printers, network-attached storage connected by the network.
Attacks could be stopped at their entry points before they spread. A computer host whose security is compromised is likely to infect other hosts connected to a potentially unsecured network. A computer host's security is vulnerable to users with higher access privileges to those hosts.