CCENT Exam Prep: General Network Security
- Apr 2, 2008
This chapter is from the book
Introduction
Information technology has evolved and provides countless resources for everyday people to create, maintain, and utilize data. If you have ever seen or read Spiderman, you have likely heard the quote "With great power comes great responsibility." Information is power, so it is vitally important to implement safeguards on your LAN and WAN to protect data from hackers. Everyone with a computer is susceptible and should be cautious with important private details such as credit card information. I have worked in the networking department at several types of companies, including a health-care company. Imagine if a hacker were to obtain patient medical records or a list of social security numbers from the human resources database. A company must follow special guidelines to ensure data privacy, which ties directly to network security. To make sure that companies adhere to security guidelines, annual audits are performed on their networks to identify potential weaknesses.
Even though network security has been a hot topic since the advent of computer networking, it is a new set of objectives on the CCENT and CCNA exams. To prepare yourself for the exams, you must know what classes of attack are common today, how to mitigate those attacks, and what features or hardware Cisco offers to assist in protecting your network. This chapter begins with a discussion of prevalent classes of attack.
