The Network Security. Org

I recently got to write a fun piece for InfoWorld called "Stupid user tricks" about protecting your network from human error. Researching the article revealed to me how many variables folks tend to miss when running a network, as well as when planning to protect and recover that network.

I suppose some of the errors I encountered while researching the article are more surprising to us consultant types because we live and breathe best practices. We live it, we breathe it, we get to install and bill for it, and then we get to walk away and do it all someplace else. Day to day systems administrators live and breathe a just get it done philosophy, and they can't walk away.

In this article we'll continue where we left off in Part 1 and discuss how to actually backup and restore data using the Backup utility that comes with Windows 2003, as well as take a look at disaster recovery.

If you missed the first part of this article series please read Windows 2003: Data Backup and Recovery (Part 1) A General Overview.

How many ways are there to expose sensitive personal data? One company misplaces a backup tape; another puts customers' Social Security numbers onto mailing labels for anyone to see. Others lose laptops, inadvertently post private information online, or leave documents exposed to prying eyes. The possibilities are endless as we're learning with every new revelation of a data breach or hack or inexcusable lapse in secure business practices.

Planning for disaster recovery is a long process; however, it doesn't actually end when the documents are signed and the products and services you need are bought. What is the state of your current DR plan, and how much work do you need to do before it's ready for production?

Tracking the progress of your DR plan implementation isn't as easy as it might sound up front. There are benchmarks that can be staged so that you can report back to management as steps are being taken, but properly managing the placement and reporting on these benchmarks can become a bit of a nightmare.

1. BackTrack

The newest contender on the block of course is BackTrack, which we have spoken about previously. An innovative merge between WHax and Auditor (WHax formely WHoppix).

BackTrack is the result of the merging of two Innovative Penetration Testing live Linux distributions Whax and Auditor, combining the best features from both distributions, and paying special attention to small details, this is probably the best version of either distributions to ever come out.

Rounding out our discussions of regulatory compliance and disaster recovery (DR), we'll take a look this week at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and what regulations it sets forth for banks and similar financial institutions when it comes to DR planning.

Legal pressures, not to mention your moral obligation to assist unwitting victims, means that you should never delay when disclosing IT security incidents. In November 2005 a laptop belonging to an employee of the Boeing Corporation was stolen. Among the information on the machine was personal financial data about 161,000 current and former employees of the aerospace giant.

Invalid or corrupt device drivers can wreck havoc on a server, rendering the system unbootable in some cases. In this article, I will show you some techniques for recovering from even the worst device driver mishaps in a variety of Windows operating systems. The scary part is that most administrators are under a huge amount of pressure to keep their servers up to date with the latest patches and drivers. With such frequent updating, it only stands to reason that sooner or later the odds of an administrator downloading a buggy, corrupt, or simply incorrect device driver at some point in time are pretty good.

The people who drive your business rely on Active Directory every minute of every day. So when it comes to ensuring that your directory is secure, reliable and compliant, it's your job to be prepared.

Arm yourself with "The Definitive Guide to Active Directory Disaster Recovery," a comprehensive guide designed to help you recover and restore everything from users and GPOs to domains and entire forests - including their pre-defined attributes. It's packed with more than 60 pages of real-life disaster scenarios, plus tips and techniques to help you plan for and recover from directory disruptions.

The only thing which is certain in a computer network is a disaster. One such disaster occurred in 1999 when a website containing personal information about Canadian Air Miles loyalty card customers. This led to the compromise of nearly 50,000 consumers, since the website was unprotected. Justin Peltier of Detroit based Peltier Associates says that these kind of silly mistakes are common in a network environment.

Is your network data really safe? Despite having the best security devices deployed, many high profile organizations have recently had their valuable customer data stolen. Most organizations' valuable data is still sent in the clear, open for exploitation. As networks expand, this practice becomes more perilous and the risk of data loss increases.

So, how do you approach securing that dynamic data? According to best practices espoused by top security experts, encrypting the data in motion over the network is key to protecting it. Download this paper to learn how you can quickly and easily protect all of your data in motion within just 15 minutes with revolutionary new technology that is ideally suited to protecting data for storage, wireless and LAN campus networks.