Network Security and Perimeter Protection:

Believe it not, regardless what security marketing would have you believe, there is no one single solution to protect your network and the devices on that network from threats coming in from the internet. Any security professional worth their salt will tell you that a layered approach is the best way to protect your network assets, which includes the most important asset: your data.

Layer One: Perimeter Protection

Perimeter Protection should not be taken lightly. Even if your business is as small as 4 workstations and no servers. Skimping on Perimeter Protection by utilizing consumer grade security devices such as those you might find in Staples or Office Max will not get the job done. They're very limited in what they can do and as such are limited in the type and amount of protection they can afford your network. Consumer grade equipment does not a secure environment create; not even close!

Layer Two: Educated and Well Informed Users

There is certainly no substitute for educated and well informed computer users. The more they are aware of threats as well as what and what not to do the more secure your environment is and the safer your business is. But this isn't the end of it, however it is a crucial part.

Layer Three: Anti-Virus Protection

This third component is the heart and soul of a basic three layered approach to security in a network environment and is absolutely required where there are machines connected to a network where there is a constant and always-on connection to the internet.

There are many things to consider when looking for an Anti-Virus solution. Listed here are the ones that we believe are the most important and listed in priority of importance:

1. Quality of protection afforded to machines where it's installed. (details)
2. Vendor Response Times to emerging threats. (details)
3. Impact of Software on systems where it's installed. (details)
4. AV Packages' Strength, reliability and accuracy when identifying and dealing with threats. (details)
5. Amount of Administration Overhead needed to manage the AV package across an entire network. (details)
6. Deployment Cost to protect both small, medium and even large networks. (details)

Quality of Protection

Quality of Protection can be considered a relative term when it comes to AV protection. That being said there are a number of factors to consider when defining Quality or Protection for your environment. When it comes to Quality of Protection CISS considers how well and quickly the AV packages detects threats, how far in a threat must get before it's detected, how much of a performance impact the AV package has on the machine where it's running, (otherwise known as it's foot-print), and how on top of things the vendor is when it comes to updates where virus signatures are concerned.

Vendor Response Times

Vendor Response Time doesn't refer to the amount of, frequency of updates a vendor releases in a day's time, but rather refers to the amount of time which elapses between the emergance of a new threat discovered in the wild and when a main-stream AV vendor has a solution in the channel for clients to download, and thereby protecting them from these threats. Most are pretty even on this account. Partially because they're getting the bulk of their data from common sources; CERT for instance.

Impact of Software

This is a very important area when it comes to Anti-Virus software. No matter how good the AV solution is, no matter how short the vendor response time is, no matter how cost effective the AV solution appears to be, if the AV solution has an impact on your machine that a user is unable to work on their machine while a full computer scan is running, then it's the wrong AV solution for your environment - period!

AV Packages's Strength

Administrative Overhead

Deployment Costs