There is, however, an undercurrent to Cisco's vulnerabilities: It is the administration of these critical infrastructure devices, including their procedures, processes and tools. Highly skilled technicians today perform most device administration anonymously, with little or no accountability.

Letters to the editor: Undercurrents of Cisco vulnerabilities
By Readers, NetworkWorld.com, 09/05/05
Are your security policies and implementations so complex they have become a vulnerability?
Security is the process of protection. Locking all the doors, closing all the windows and building a methodology that enhances the integrity of your company's data infrastructure. This process is usually the first step, when small businesses determine they have suffered a business interruption due to some act of malicious mischief.
The security industry is growing by leaps and bounds, the pressures on IT to build a valid working policy are getting harder, and the software giants are not making it easier. Here are some facts from the United Stated Computer Emergency Respond Team:
Marloe Group monitors customer sites using a U.T.M.S. What is a UTMS?
  • Many computers' default configurations are insecure.
  • New security vulnerabilities may have been discovered between the time the computer was built and configured by the manufacturer and the user setting up the computer for the first time.
  • When upgrading software from commercially packaged media (e.g., CD-ROM, DVD-ROM), new vulnerabilities may have been discovered since the disc was manufactured.
  • Attackers know the common broadband and dial-up IP address ranges, and scan them regularly.
  • Numerous worms are already circulating on the Internet continuously scanning for new computers to exploit.
  • As a result, the average time-to-exploitation on some networks for an unprotected computer is measured in minutes. This is especially true in the address ranges used by cable modem, DSL, and dial-up providers.
Marloe Group monitors customer sites using a Unified Threat Management System that incorporates Antivirus, Worm, Spyware, Intrusion Prevention, SPAM, and content filtering.
Attackers have become more sophisticated, and their attacks more targeted. Many of today's attacks are blended attacks, which actually use multiple techniques to try to infiltrate your network, and it's necessary to use an array of techniques to combat those attacks. But, managing multiple, separate security tools can be overwhelming and inefficient, not to mention expensive. Unified Threat Management (UTM) is the latest approach to security--bringing a new level of efficiency to the security field.

Unified threat management systems must at minimum:

  • Be an appliance
  • Include multiple security features
  • Have a hardened OS
  • Be able to perform:
  • Network firewalling
  • Intrusion prevention (IPS) ("Stop Attacks!")
  • Gateway anti-virus
What Can You Do?

Contact Marloe Group and learn how we can track, identify and collect forensic evidence to destroy a hacker.
How can we help?
Experience - Our expertise has been called upon by the U.S. State Department as well as Banks and Computer Manufacturers based in Houston.

FSDM - Our methodology for IT has been built up from 20 years of computer networking experience, and what makes us different is we wrote it all down.

Managed Services - Our solution will allow you to manage your business while we take care of the tools that make your business run. Our experience guarantees your IT department will be a better more responsible department. Our policies and procedures give you tools to see what is really going on.

Documentation - We document our work, and your network. If things go bad and you have to evacuate the building, there are procedures for shut down, for evacuating equipment, and protecting data, written so that anyone can figure it out. Minimize your risk, call Marloe Group today.

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