Why Is Network Security Important?
Advanced network security solutions offer a more agile security approach in a world dominated by the cloud. Previously, many enterprises took the old “castle and moat” approach, using a firewall to provide perimeter-style security to a central corporate system. Herein, layers of defenses were built to prevent cybercriminals from breaching the perimeter, and if one layer fell, another was in place behind it.
This worked well back when IT infrastructure was hosted on-site in a single server, but as employees became more mobile, they needed to be able to access systems and data from many different locations. This gave rise to virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow remote users to access the internal network. We’ll look at VPNs again in the next section.
In the age of the cloud, the cyberthreat landscape and the needs of modern organizations have changed. With more frequent and sophisticated attacks, more stringent regulations, and far more data to process and secure, older models often can’t provide the agility, flexibility, and more advanced protection needed today.
What Types of Threats Does Network Security Prevent?
The variety of network security tools on the market speaks to the breadth of the threat landscape. There are countless solutions designed to stop malware (e.g., spyware, ransomware, trojans), phishing, and other such threats.
The key thing to note about legacy network security solutions ties back to the “castle and moat” approach—they’re largely built to protect networks against malicious activities from outside, with far less ability to protect from inside. We’ll take a closer look at that shortly.