Increase in the number of organized and targeted attacks and the ever-expanding attack surface for cyber threats have made security a major discussion point across the IT landscape in recent years. With technological advancements like the cloud, IoT, and BYOD, there is a huge increase in the number of devices getting connected to the organization’s network resulting in a lot of endpoints to shore up and threats to keep at bay. Organizations need to be extra vigilant to protect their network against attacks from the ever-evolving cyber threats. With polymorphic attacks continuing to be highly effective, it is very difficult to foresee what kind of attack the next one would be. It is therefore pertinent to have our defense strategy in place to effectively thwart all such attacks and secure our network.

In this article, we will look at 3 key parameters that need to be fortified to ensure a secure network. Ensuring a powerful firewall is one of the essential criteria for network security. Securing your emails to prevent it from becoming a threat to the network is very important in the current scenario of malware, spam and phishing attacks finding its way into the network through emails. Content filtering is another vital parameter to consider while securing your network as it not only prevents web-based threats but also improves employee productivity by controlling employee’s Internet usage.

Read more: Business Network: The first point of entry for hackers

A powerful firewall with the below features would strengthen your network security:

• Reinforce your network security by regulating and controlling the inward and outward network traffic based on pre-defined rules.
• An embedded Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) fortifies the firewall as it monitors the network traffic for any cyber threat and halts them.
• An up-to-date gateway antivirus that scans all network traffic for abnormalities and takes suitable action.

Securing your emails is essential to prevent impostors from using social engineering maneuvers to steal data and cause financial loss. It could be ensured by:

• An updated mail antivirus and anti-spam to weed out any kind of malware and block them.
• Enforcing attachment control to ensure that malicious attachments do not find their way into the network.
• Scanning all email communication to block inbound attacks and control outgoing messagesto prevent threats to the organization.

URL filtering is necessary for an organization as granting unfettered access to the Internet could create a lot of problems for your company including grave security issues, legal troubles, and lower productivity. The following points would protect the organization from these issues:

• Secure the gateway to the web, onsite as well as in the cloud, by blocking access to malicious websites
• Security measures in place to prevent web-based threats
• Manage employee’s Internet usage and limit their accesses based on business needs.

Seqrite UTM 2.0 integrates the competencies of different security products into one all-encompassing security console including the above 3 key verticals essential to secure your network.

• Firewall & Security
  • Admins can allow or block network traffic as per the pre-defined firewall rules configured based on enterprise compliance policies
  • It has a built-in, up-to-date antivirus that scans for malware across all incoming and outgoing traffic and also gets automatically updated
  • A stateful firewall is provided to ensure a more in-depth inspection of network connections passing through it
  • An Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) with automatic update capable of detecting and preventing a wide range of DDoS and DoS attacks

• Gateway Mail Protection
  • A strong mail antivirus and anti-spam secures all email communication against varied kinds of malware and phishing attacks including filtering out unwanted attachments
  • It scrutinizes the address and IP of all incoming emails to make certain it is not coming from a malign IP address
  • It also provides keyword blocking for emails and HTTP(S) traffic fortifying all your emails

• URL Filtering
  • Website categorization and filtering based on the same is provided in this tool along with keyword-based blocking
  • Defining custom web lists for whitelisted and blacklisted websites to be used for filtering is part of this tool
  • It facilitates time-based and bandwidth-based access control for users
  • It also provides the facility to classify the applications and control access to them

The Seqrite UTM 2.0 is the need of the hour for a strong defense mechanism for your network. Apart from the above features mentioned, Seqrite UTM can dynamically control bandwidth allocation, IP allocation, ensures efficiency of bandwidth through effective load balancing, automatic link failover making it a versatile solution for securing your network.

As an IT security partner for your business, Seqrite provides comprehensive security from advanced cyber threats. To know more