Is your network secure from hackers?

Without your knowledge or explicit permission, the Windows networking technology which connects your computer to the Internet may be offering some or all of your computer's data to the entire world at this very moment! A firewall sits in between your network and the internet and filters the data going to and from your network, it only allows specific connections through. this prevent hackers from exploiting many well known security loopholes in the operating system of your network.

Biggest Security Concern

Use the link to Shields UP to test your network today. the results may shock you !!

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What is a Firewall ?

A firewall is simply a program or hardware device that filters the information coming through the Internet connection into your private network or computer system. If an incoming packet of information is flagged by the filters, it is not allowed through.

Let's say that you work at a company with 500 employees. The company will therefore have hundreds of computers that all have network cards connecting them together. In addition, the company will have one or more connections to the Internet through something like T1 or T3 lines. Without a firewall in place, all of those hundreds of computers are directly accessible to anyone on the Internet. A person who knows what he or she is doing can probe those computers, try to make FTP connections to them, try to make telnet connections to them and so on. If one employee makes a mistake and leaves a security hole, hackers can get to the machine and exploit the hole.

With a firewall in place, the landscape is much different. A company will place a firewall at every connection to the Internet (for example, at every T1 line coming into the company). The firewall can implement security rules. For example, one of the security rules inside the company might be:

Out of the 500 computers inside this company, only one of them is permitted to receive public FTP traffic. Allow FTP connections only to that one computer and prevent them on all others.

A company can set up rules like this for FTP servers, Web servers, Telnet servers and so on. In addition, the company can control how employees connect to Web sites, whether files are allowed to leave the company over the network and so on. A firewall gives a company tremendous control over how people use the network.

Firewall's use one or more of three methods to control traffic flowing in and out of the network:

Packet filtering - Packets (small chunks of data) are analyzed against a set of filters. Packets that make it through the filters are sent to the requesting system and all others are discarded.

Proxy service - Information from the Internet is retrieved by the firewall and then sent to the requesting system and vice versa.

Stateful inspection - A newer method that doesn't examine the contents of each packet but instead compares certain key parts of the packet to a database of trusted information. Information traveling from inside the firewall to the outside is monitored for specific defining characteristics, then incoming information is compared to these characteristics. If the comparison yields a reasonable match, the information is allowed through. Otherwise it is discarded.

Virus/Spam Protection

Here at E-IT Solutions Uk, we highly recommend 'Messagelabs' security to all our clients due to their high success rate against Virus/Spam attacks.

Virus
More than 60,000 have been identified, and 400 new ones are created every month, according to the International Computer Security Association (ICSA). With numbers like this, it's safe to say that most organizations will regularly encounter virus outbreaks. With the development of the Internet the probability of being infected has increased many times. No one who uses computers is immune to viruses.

• Skeptic uses patented artificial intelligence to detect and stop new viruses and variants even before new signatures are available.
  
  
• Virus-infected email stored for 30 days and accessible in an emergency.
  
  
• Notifications auto-generated to sender and administrator
  Uses Skeptic’s artificial intelligence and 3 commercial scanners.
  
  
• Online service statistics and reports delivered through InSight (MessageLabs’ web-based management tool)

Spam
Spam has already become a global epidemic, costing businesses around the world millions of wasted dollars a year. A recent Gartner Group survey revealed that 34% of business email is useless. The same study also revealed that employees spend an average of 49 minutes a day managing email. The European Commission reports that Internet Subscribers worldwide are unwittingly paying an estimated $94 million a year in connection costs- just to receive junk email.

• Uses patented artificial intelligence to block all unsolicited email which impacts on employee productivity.
  
  
• Minimises false positives and false negatives through
  ground-breaking Skeptic technology.
  
  
• You can customise the service spam filter, specifying domains, IP and email addresses you wish to block and accept mail from.
  
  
• Spam can be blocked instantly or sent to a nominated system administrator or an alternative email address.
  
  
• You can control your own service parameters and view online statistics and reports via InSight (MessageLabs’ web-based management tool)

Pornographic Material
The problem with pornography in the workplace, the home and in education has escalated considerably through Internet access and increasing email usage. In the workplace, it not only costs companies millions in non-business related internet activity, but has also led to damaged business reputations, harassment cases and employee claims. Recent tests have shown that one in four email image attachments are pornographic and nearly 80% of employers have detected abuse of the internet at work.

• Ensures accurate detection of pornography through Skeptic technology.
  
  
• Identifies pornography entering and leaving an organisation.
  
  
• Emails containing suspect images can either be tagged, sent or copied to a nominated system administrator, or deleted.
  
  
• You can specify levels of detection sensitivity based on high, medium and low settings via InSight (MessageLabs’ web-based management tool)

Online service statistics and reports delivered through InSight