Re: A good starting point

[James Taylor <james_n_taylor () yahoo com>]

Paul,

Buy a book and wade through it, it's not that bad. Read the
'Hacking Exposed' series. Check out CERT websites. Read &
search through the Security Focus archive and articles.

Understand that no technology will stop a detirmined
hacker. Not because of the technology, but normally because
of the way it's implemented or the processes an
organisation implements internally.

I would suggest that, being a college with no budget, you
are up against it. By 'applying the basics' of
packet-filtering routers, firewalls, IDS's (network -
(snort) & host (tripwire)), hardening your servers (& only
run services you need, not what the administrator demands),
encryption on sensitive data/connections and employing a
good access control policy (strong passwords changed
regularly), you will go some way (way more than most ;-))
to preventing attacks. Being a college, you have to assume
that the internal network is not safe, therefore you should
take the approach that 'users' logging on to use 'network
resources' must have strong authentication mechanisms to
ensure that the system knows the identity of who is
accessing services. E.g. Kerberos on NT.

I have no personal knowledge of a Pix, but I know if it's
set up correctly, it's a strong barrier.

Oh - if they are short of cash, why buy a pix? And another
thing, don't let people on public mailing lists know your
organisation's domain name - you've just told them your
hardware.

Regards
James

--- Paul Hawkinson <phawkinson () montreat edu> wrote:
>   There is so much information of the internet these days
> about security 
> that it is hard as a security neophyte to know the places
> to find the 
> information that I need to know to tighten the security
> on my network.  
> We have recently gotten a Pix 515 firewall and I need to
> know the best 
> way for me to get ramped up on setting it up so we are
> better protected 
> from attacks from the internet.
>
>   So, I guess what I want to hear from the folks here is
> what are the 
> best resources for learning about securing my network. 
> Yes, I want to be 
> able to configure my Pix firewall, but I also want to
> know what types of 
> attacks the Pix won’t be able to repel.  
>
>   I work for a small private college and getting the
> funding to go to 
> some security training classes just isn’t there.  We were
> lucky enough to 
> get the money for the Pix.
>
> I know there are wonderful sites, security tutorials and
> books out there 
> but it is hard to sift through all of the resources that
> are available.
>
>  
>
> Thanks everyone,
>
>  
>
> Paul
>
>  


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com