Planning Internet security

When you develop your Internet use plans, you must plan for your Internet security needs.

You must gather detailed information about your Internet use plans and document your internal network configuration. Based on the information you gathered, you can accurately evaluate your security needs.

For instance, you need to document and describe the following information:

• Your current network configuration.
• Domain Name System (DNS) and e-mail server configuration information.
• Your connection to your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
• The services you want to use from the Internet.
• The services you want to provide to Internet users.

Documenting this type of information helps you determine where your security exposures are and what security measures you need to minimize these exposures.

For example, you decide that you want to allow your internal users to use Telnet to connect to hosts at a special research location. Your internal users need this service to help them develop new products for your company; however, you might have some concerns about confidential data flowing unprotected across the Internet. If competitors capture and use the data, your company might face a financial risk. Having identified your usage needs (Telnet) and the associated risks (exposure of confidential information), you can determine what additional security measures you must put into effect to ensure data confidentiality for this usage (such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) enablement).