To put a little perspective on just how important data security can be, let’s take a quick peek at a common, every-day occurrence: a credit card transaction. In 2012, roughly two-thirds of ALL transactions were completed using a credit or debit card. Total number of card transactions? 73,900,000,000. (1) Without the proper security measures in place, that would be 74 billion opportunities for private information to be stolen. Whether it’s your customer’s financial data or your company’s employee data, security is extremely important in the Modern Workplace.
By Virtualizing you network, you can rest assured that all activity on your network is safe and confidential. Since your data is being accessed via the internet, all the traffic within your network occurs using SSL encryption and security protocols. SSL utilizes an encrypted link between the server and the user, ensuring all data transferred between the two remains secure. Being proactive about your security approach will only serve to benefit your company. When you finally decide to virtualize your network, there are many added layers of security that work to keep your data safe.
A virtualized network can be built on an internal IP segment, offering two distinct benefits. First, this internal segment is invisible to the outside world. It cannot be scanned for open ports, and without a large amount of very specific information, can’t be accessed. The second benefit lies in the unification of the network. With virtualization, locations in different cities or states can all exist in the same network, securely sharing data between all each other.
I’d like to take the chance to have my “soapbox moment.” By far, end users are the single largest security threat. The single greatest thing you can do to immediately improve your network security, is to educate your end users on safe computing habits. Simple things like using strong passwords and not opening attachments or pop-ups from unknown or dubious sources can go a long way to keeping your network secure. Rules can be applied to the network that limit what each user can access, software can be purchased to zap malware and viruses, but the first and last line of defense will always be the end user.
Stayed tuned for next week’s post – we’ll examine how virtualizing your network will greatly improve network management and resolve our remaining security concerns!
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