The Humble Router - Best Security

I am often asked about Internet security. It is a truism that the weakest link in security in most law firms is the ability to gain confidential computer information from employees of the the firm. Small firms are not immune to this disease. This post is not intended to give strategies for identifying persons who use social engineering to get confidential information from employees, although every firm should train its employees in methods of computer and Internet security. Every employee should know and understand that email and attachments to email should be scrutinized carefully before being opened, and should understand phishing and pharming schemes. Today, however, I want to talk about the one essential hardware security system, the humble router. Most routers nowadays are really cheap (under $100), and contain the best Internet security you can get: a NAT. NAT stands for Network Address Translation, and, simply put, it makes your internal network computers invisible to the hackers and bad people on the Internet. In effect the NAT assigns a private Internet address to each computer on the network, and, when traffic comes from outside through the router, "translates" the request to travel to the correct computer. So, as far as the world is concerned, your network is located at a "public" address, but hacking attempts to that address are stopped at the front door. This is a classic firewall, and should be between every computer you own and the Internet, both at home and at the office. In future posts, I will talk about what you can do to protect yourself from Internet traffic that is "invited in" by you or your employees. Remember, be careful out there.
Rick