Desktop Security
Protecting your organization means guarding against attackers as well as internal problems. Tools are essential, but so is user education.
August 27, 2004
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Our comprehensive desktop-security plan is four-pronged, consisting of software firewalls, encrypted channels, antivirus tools and user education. In fact, before you buy a single security item, you must have a user-education program and a system to enforce and maintain it.
The Always-On Alternative
Applications or drivers that run on the end user's PC--software firewalls--usually act as a kernel shim. The software intercepts the data being passed between the kernel and network card drivers, inspecting all network traffic passed through it.
There are two major types of software firewalls: port blockers and application blockers. Port blockers, which include the built-in Windows 2000/XP firewall and the IPtables on Linux, work just like gateway or Internet firewalls and can block communications only to or from specific TCP/UDP ports.
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