Many organizations slowly realize that once they acquire a dedicated broadband Internet connection, they essentially leave their front door of their computer network unlocked. Hackers first snoop around with a network scanning program and then use this information to potentially cause communications havoc as well as snoop around and obtain confidential information from any computers on the network.

Datamax has setup and maintained Sonicwall, Watchguard, Checkpoint and Cisco PIX Firewalls for organizations. However, we tend to lean towards Sonicwall since it offers the best security for the dollar.

We are an authorized Sonicwall reseller and maintain dozens of them for clients in the Washington DC metro area. Sonicwall has probably the largest install base in the country. Certainly, the Cisco PIX and Checkpoint firewalls are more elaborate, but the Sonicwall product line covers all the security bases without costing a small fortune. Most small organizations simply don’t need such sophistication. Banks may have huge walk-in safes, but small retail stores just need a basic safe

It is estimated hat there are maybe 2000 people in the world that have the skill to hack into most places. The bigger threat is the “script kiddies”. These are amateurs who acquire hacking scripts and then experiment breaking into places over the Internet. They are a far more numerous. What we have also been seeing are “auto scripts”. These are computer generated searches just randomly traversing Internet connections. We use to think there was strength in numbers, because it would be physically impossible for the limited number of hackers to scale the 4.6 billion IP addresses of the Internet, particularly for small businesses, but these auto scripts have snuffed that small comfort

Network Security is like a faucet, we can tighten it and we can loosen it. Unfortunately, the trade off for increased security is more restrictions for the end users. Network security relies on both technology and protocol. Network experts tend to agree that the easiest method to break into a network is falsely obtain a password from one of the employees.

Our job for our clients is to educate them on the exact nature of the threat and not over sell them using fear tactics (we have seen it a little to often in this business).