IT systems are compromised every day. Whether the intent was malicious or accidental the systems are ultimately affected. In some cases the damage is obvious with system performance affected or systems that are unstable or unavailable. More often security breeches are undetected for long periods of time. The less obvious are usually the most critical and therefore damaging. If your company deals in confidential information (especially regulated industries such as health-care, HIPAA), then a regular security audit is necessary. Another misconception is that all security compromise is a direct "inward" attack from viruses, internet hackers, etc. Many times the security breech has occurred from "within" the company, again either intentional or accidental.

 

There are multiple tools and processes already created within the security community by such organizations such as the SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) network. Five Iron Technologies will use these standards and tools, such as checklists, developed by such organizations during our audits. We will also use a variety of system tools, such as port scanners, auditing software, and others to accomplish our tasks.

 

Our approach:

 

Physical inspection of all network equipment.

Physical inspection of all computers.

Software scanning of the network including routers, servers, firewalls, operating systems, patches, account policies, registries, etc - for potential or known security "holes".

Complete review of all policies and procedures including: email, remote access, passwords, physical access, backup procedure, contingency plans, etc.

Using software tools we will perform internal and external attack and penetration testing.

 

Once we have completed our audit, our network engineers will provide a written report of our findings and recommendations. The report will categorize your vulnerabilities into risk categories of Critical, High, Medium, and Low and sorted according to specific area. Our report will also offer solutions to the identified security risks. Potential solutions fall in the following categories:

 

Change to a configuration setting.

Installation of a software patch.

Implementation of a new procedure.

Employee training in prevention and monitoring.

Installation or upgrade of hardware.

Installation of monitoring, scanning, or intrusion detection devices or software.