Читать книгу Cybersecurity For Dummies - Joseph Steinberg - Страница 18

Not that many years ago, in the pre-Internet era, it was impossible for hackers to access corporate systems remotely because corporate networks were not connected to any public networks, and often had no dial-in capabilities. Executives on the road would often call their assistants to check messages and obtain necessary data while they were remote. In later years they may have connected to corporate networks via special dial-up connections using telephone-line–based private lines for extremely limited access to only one or two specific systems.

Connectivity to the Internet, of course, created risk, but initially most firewalls were set up in ways that did not allow people outside the organization to initiate communications — so, short of firewall misconfigurations and/or bugs, most internal systems remained relatively isolated. The dawn of e-commerce and e-banking, of course, meant that certain production systems had to be reachable and addressable from the outside world, but employee networks, for example, usually remained generally isolated.

The arrival of remote access technologies — starting with services like Outlook Web Access and pcAnywhere, and evolving to full VPN and VPN-like access — has totally changed the game.

Likewise, even in the short time since the first edition of this book was published, the dramatic reduction in the cost of cellular-based high-speed Internet access and the availability of mobile data plans supporting data limits sufficient enough to allow effective full-time use have dramatically reduced the need for utilizing public Wi-Fi connections. Risks that one might have deemed reasonable to take a few years ago in order to achieve various business aims have become unnecessary, and as such, policies and procedures regarding public Wi-Fi access must be updated, as is discussed later in this book in Chapters 7 and 21.