Block Unwanted traffic

This is for the first time I am able to follow-up on some of my posts. I just couldn't stand not writing about this. Barely a week after my last post and spending enough time pondering on that approach, I picked up the latest copy of Network World (www.nww.com). This week's issue is all about the current industry buzz (http://www.networkworld.com/buzz/2005/?ts) in various industries and areas of IT and of course Information Security figured in it. Given the current sensitivity of the Information security, the buzz has dedicated two articles for it and both of them re-inforce the same point.

DON'T FIGHT AGAINST THE UNKNOWN - PROTECT AND ALLOW ONLY THE KNOWN

The articles can be read here and here and are definitely a good read. One talks about rootkits (mainly on UNIX) and the other one talks about e-extortion.

I think finally people are realising that it would be very hard to keep up with new threats and it would be wiser and many times easier to just deny anything that we don't know about. But the current setups and infrastructures are so messed up (networks, software applications, appliances, servers and OS included) that it would take nothing less than a major overhaul to rectify the existing chaos. But at least now we should start securing our environment moving forward.

Its not that difficult, provided you know what you enterprise runs.