May 26, 2005 - Network Security Specialist Visits Thunder Bay
On Thursday, I had a chance to sit in on a session with Charles J. Salameh, President of Bell Security Solutions Inc. Mr. Salameh talked about the how information is at risk, specifically when it is transit between your gateway and it's destination location. People don't often think about their information in transit, we have firewalls, virus scanners and other tools in our offices but nothing that gaurantees the safety of the information during transit - and really, there is no way we can control it while in transit. This is the job of the carriers such as Bell. He also dwelled on the weakest security link in the chain - Your End User. It is vital that your users are educated and knowledgeable about your network and know what is safe and what could open doors for hackers. Every organization, especially those who use distributed networks should have strong policies in place regarding user passwords, Internet use and security practices. Some really easy solutions are to remove user accounts immediately after the dismissal of an employee, use passwords that include numbers and letters and change them frequently. He also touched on the "zero" response time. With the bandwidth into your offices growing at an exponential rate, by the time a hacker gains access it is already to late - whereas in the past you could see the start of an attack and take preventitive measures.

This information session was put on by Contact North in partnership with Bell Canada.