By now, we are all well aware of the wild, wild world of the Internet. Anyone who has stood up a server, registered the domain name, and gotten some links to their site, knows that your servers almost immediately start getting “sniffed” by various sources. In many cases, this sniffing leads to an attempt in short order to try to analyze your server for various known holes or flaws. Organizations with much larger resources than yours (think: governments and the Fortune 100) routinely are disrupted, defaced, or outright brought down for the count so you can be sure that truly foolproof network security is nearly impossible to guarantee. What you can do for your server infrastructure, however, is “get a grip” on the basics of network security. There are enough gaping holes out on the Internet – many leading to databases or network access of great interest to hackers – that if you succeed in plugging all the common security holes, you will have thwarted the vast majority of infiltration attempts. read more
