Managed IT Services Kansas City

Posted by Johnson on 10 feb, 2015 comments(2)

We specialize in IT Security Managed IT Services and IT Compliance for small to mid-sized businesses. Contact us today for a free IT Health Screening. We'll run an auidt on your security set up and show you what's working and show you where you have some work to do to harden up your network.

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IT Security

In the information age, security has become more difficult to define and keep enforced across all the lines of business that a company has.

What is IT?

Generally speaking, within any large organization, security generally refers to keeping laptops, desktop computers, servers, and networking devices such as routers and switches secure. As there is a going reliance on computers, and computer networks to connect, share and distribute information, thus increasing the risk of data escaping into unauthorized hands. While it's still important to keep tight control on access to paper documents, and who phone calls are made to, it's much more difficult to apply the same security protocols to digital work products. In addition to securing physical access, and networks, it's always a good idea to keep in mind that there are a lot of "bad guys" out there on the Internet. Anyone who is keeping security top of mind knows that they need to keep a digital fence, such as a firewall, between their company and the Internet. By using a firewall to protect the company and its propriety information, it's much more likely that information will be kept secure and away from prying eyes.

Strategies

By controlling access to important and confidential electronic information so that only those who are authorized to access it are allowed to do so. This might seem like a simple task, but as computers and networks have become increasing complex, so do the challenges of keeping computer networks secure. When working to develop a strategy, it should be kept in mind that there are three main pillars. Those are confidentiality, followed by integrity, and lastly, availability. By breaking IT security out into these different areas, one can then hone in on and develop a plan of attack. If this process is not followed, a strategy might be put together that is too broad, and in the end, not as effective as is desired.

Step 1:

The first item in the strategy, confidentiality, means that one should take the time to determine who needs access to the data, when they need access to it, and when they do not. Oftentimes a company will put together a list of persons who need to have access the data, and then review the different time lines or time frames that should be permitted. It would make sense that the VP of a company might need access to any information on a file server twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week; but that VP's secretary likely would not. Along the same lines as confidentiality, there are newer products that allow a company's information technology division to track who accesses documents, where they are Emailed to, who has opened them, and so on.

Step 2:

The second pillar, integrity doesn't necessarily mean what you might take it to be. When the term integrity is used in terms of digital items, it means that an organization needs to ensure that the data, such as a word document, has not been tampered with or altered. This is especially important when documents like a will, trust, or real estate transaction has been created. There are legal ramifications and IT Compliance concerns for not keeping documents secure, should they be altered or modified by un-authorized third parties. As a side note, one of the interesting developments in the insurance industry is coverage for just such an incident; these policies typically offer blanket product into the millions of dollars, to be used to cover court costs, lost revenue, etc.

Step 3:

The third area of consideration, availability, are those actions taken that will allow for data to be highly available to those who need it. In the past, this simply meant that data would be placed a special type of information technology device, called a file server, that would then be set up with the correct permissions, making sure that only those who are authorized to access information can.

Summary

However, these days, this access would include technologies such as wireless (aka "wifi"), remote desktop protocol, virtual private networks, or site to site connections. In addition to how a user might access the data, it is very important to make sure that there are methods in place to make copies of data in different locations, and ideally, in different formats, such as tape backup, storage area networking, or NAS servers. With the arrival of cloud services, it is now possible for a company to have copies of their data sent securely over the Internet to a secure location where it is encrypted, so that that should someone who is not authorized to have access to the system gain it, they would not be able to read the information.

As data security is a very complex and very technically challenging subject to tackle, it's usually best to hire a company who specializes in this discipline.

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