Troubleshooting Management Access

Week 9 Discussion: “Troubleshooting Management Access” Please respond to the following:

Determine the greatest security challenge that a network administrator might encounter when troubleshooting issues in secured networks. Suggest one (1) way to mitigate such a challenge. Provide a rationale to support your response.

Per the text, Cisco security focuses on three (3) functional planes called the management, control, and data. Give your opinion on whether or not you believe it is logical to divide the security functions into the three (3) areas in the same manner as Cisco security does within a single device. Justify your response.

Response:

There have been major changes in information security attack strategies, known as vectors, and an increase in their public visibility over the years. Advanced persistent threats (APTs) became more common and mobile and wireless security came into the forefront. DDoS attacks became cloud-based, leveraging virtual servers to generate ultra-high bandwidth attacks. Therefore, the greatest security challenge that a network administrator might encounter when troubleshooting issues in secured networks might be state-sponsored espionage. This challenge highlights the need to protect critical data from politically or financially motivated threats. Critical data includes the information needed to run network attached infrastructure as well as the intellectual property used to manage business and drive innovative solutions. One way to mitigate such a challenge is for businesses to bolster their security significantly by implementing dual-factor authentication and monitoring remote access. Reducing the number of privileged accounts, and requiring the use of unique local administrator passwords can also help. And while these basic efforts at cyber-hygiene can go a long way towards securing an environment, it’s also important to use a flexible security architecture, and technology that can identify malware without using signatures.