External Vulnerability Security Assessment

Understand Your Current Known Vulnerabilities
Businesses today have a need to distribute data and communicate in a shared environment, causing more information from the outside into your network. Of course, installing a firewall and not allowing any traffic into your network provides a secure perimeter, but it's not a practical solution for most businesses as they need to allow some traffic through for E-mail, ftp access, etc. Changes in your network configuration, as well as the host applications running on your network can cause security vulnerabilities. Understanding and assessing your current network security vulnerabilities is the first step to formulating your security plan.

An assessment consists of scanning your network using industry standard software as a tool to identify known security vulnerabilities. Understanding the vulnerabilities found, interpreting the data, ranking the vulnerabilities based on potential impact and likelihood of occurrence, analyzing your network and making recommendations to reduce security vulnerabilities is critical in preparing a report so it is useful to your organization.

Key Considerations
	Industry Standard & Updated Assessment Tools - The assessing software should contain up-to-date audit methods for staying abreast of known 'hacker exploits' and be recognized as a leader in the industry.
	Assessment Frequency - An assessment report documents known vulnerabilities of the network at that point-in-time. Networks change, necessitating regular scheduled vulnerability assessments.
	Minimal Intrusion - The assessment should not breach the network and should not significantly degrade network performance.
	Comprehensive Recommendations - The assessment should provide practical solutions to minimize security vulnerabilities.