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Your Network Security Solution: 6 Steps To Evaluate Its Effectiveness

From computer viruses to hackers, with soand integrate with existing processes and
many lurking security threats, it's importanttools that anyone (not just IT) can do it.
to have a solid network security solution inOverall, your network security solution
place. Whether your company has securityshould have monitoring, prevention, reporting
software, a dedicated IT team to monitorand  enforcement  all  in  one  solution.
suspicious activity, or both - threats keep
evolving and adapting to their environment.5. Cost of Ownership. Any solution should
That said, it would be in your best interesthave a reasonable cost of ownership, meaning
to have an integrated network securityit should possess the ability to integrate
solution with all the modern tools you needwith a broad range of security and networking
to  keep your system up and running smoothly.solutions as well as a flexible deployment
scheme. Additionally, the solution should
So how can you assess your network securityhave a measurable effectiveness, i.e.
solution to see if it's time to update yourreporting. That is if a breach or leak does
security software or procedures? Here are 6happen your solution should be able to
important aspects you should consider whenclassify the incident(s) and provide
evaluating  your  current  network  security.remediation in order to have a reasonable
cost  of  ownership.
1. Detection Accuracy. It's critical to have
a network solution that can lower the amount6. Vendor Viability. Unfortunately, the
of false positives/negatives and can alsomajority of available solutions are from
design policy controls that map to businessstart up companies with limited funds and
processes. Make sure the solution can protectproduct vision. Network security solutions
both structured and unstructured data as wellfrom start up companies can sometimes lack
as data ranging from simple credit cardthe R&D, global sales and support services
numbers and SSNs to source code and otherorganizations need to have guaranteed, long
proprietary  information.term security for their network.
Additionally, due to consolidation in the
2. Enforcement Capabilities. Since most leakssecurity industry, these small vendors and
are internal (or at least start out that way)'boutique shops' are more likely to be
it's important to have a network securityacquired by a larger company at some point or
solution with integrated enforcementeven forced out of business eventually. The
capabilities for all data types, vectors, forlarger, publicly traded firms however,
both  internal  and  external communications.generally have a more substantial customer
base, a well funded R&D program, and a global
3. Policy Administration and Updating. Makepresence with strong sales and support.
sure your network security solution is ableTherefore, purchasing solutions from a more
to set rules based on users, data, vector,viable vendor could mean better results and
and destination. It should be able to tieservice  in  the  long  run.
each of these variables together to say who
can send what information where and how.For any business present in today's
Additionally, since these policies should befast-paced, ever changing web environment,
created based on regulatory compliancefinding an integrated security solution that
requirements and corporate governance, yourwill take care of everything listed above is
network security solution should beimperative. After you've evaluated your
automatically updating them as regulationscurrent security - begin researching security
change.solutions (such as the Websense(R) Web
Security Suite (TM) ) that will fill the
4. Manageability and Reporting. Securitygaps left open by traditional security
software should be easy to deploy and manage.software.
Policy controls should be so easy to create



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