By: Keith Barthold
If you're a business owner, or even a manager at a business, then
there's a high likelihood that at one point or another you've
experienced some sort of a computer problem. Whether it was as small as
having troubles with a particular software program or as significant as a
hard drive crashing. In today's day and age we all are exposed to
technology every day and therefore it's just a matter of time before we
encounter a problem with the technology. While some of these problems
are common across the board occasionally you'll find an issue that stems
from an inexperienced person patching something together. With the end
result being an overly exposed and vulnerable network.
Take for
example Fran's Frozen Yogurt (a pseudo company for the sake of this
article). Fran's has a Point-of-Sale system that is hard wired into
their network. There is one main computer and then two mobile peripheral
POS systems. For the two peripheral systems, the main computer acts as a
server for them to connect to. There is also a wireless network setup
for the customers to use while they're eating their frozen yogurt. Seems
simple enough right? Well...yes and no. It just so happens that the
company Fran's worked with wasn't a highly qualified Dallas IT
consulting firm and as a result, all of their internal sensitive
information was extremely exposed. So what happened?
Well,
first off whenever you are having a network put in, whether it's a
wireless network, VPN (Virtual Private Network), or a LAN (Local Area
Network) it's extremely important to map out what is going to be
connected to what and how data is going to be transmitted via the
network. If you are going to be processing credit cards and sending that
data over the network then there are increased security measures that
need to be considered. You want to avoid having any weaknesses in your
system, which isn't an impossible task. Many a times it can be as simple
as moving a wire or adding a router with a built in firewall. The main
point being that you just can't expect to plug and play when it comes to
your business network.
So getting back to the network problem
at Fran's. When they had their network installed the Dallas IT
consulting firm that did the work placed the networking equipment in a
backwards configuration. They had attached a wireless router (with all
of their POS systems directly plugged into it) to the local Internet
Service Providers modem, which isn't any sort of problem if the settings
are correct on the network. However, because they offered their
customers free Wifi access, what became a security risk for them is how
they connected a second wireless router to the network. Rather than
having the wireless router used by customers connect directly to the ISP
modem and then having the main wireless router come off of that router
they connected the customer wireless router to the main company wireless
router. Thereby enabling any users on the wireless network to already
be inside the built in firewall that is present within the wireless
router.. Meaning that any technically savvy person with harmful
intentions could very easily and quickly access Fran's internal network
with all of the sensitive information and do so with little security
resistance.
Now, getting to the fix. This was a classic case of
an easily remedied situation and involved very little time but made a
world of difference when it came to security risks for the company. It
didn't require any new equipment or even any new programming. All it
involved was simply rewiring the customer wireless router so that it no
longer connected directly to the company router but instead connected to
the ISP modem. This simple task of just changing the order that the
equipment was wired together in, made all the difference in the world
with their network security. And now the owner's of that business can
have peace of mind knowing that their network is secure and it didn't
cost them an arm and a leg. All it took was a knowledgeable Dallas IT
consulting firm. So next time you need an IT consulting firm to do any
of your networking needs make sure that they have a game plan for
mapping out your network needs and ask them how they plan on keeping
everything secure.
Keith Barthold is the owner of DKB Innovative a Dallas IT Consulting firm that provides IT Services Dallas.
Article Source:
http://www.articlebiz.com/article/1051581550-1-it-consulting-real-life-example/
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