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IT Security

IT security is a set of cybersecurity strategies that prevents unauthorized access to organizational assets such as computers, networks, and data. It maintains the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive information, blocking the access of sophisticated hackers.​

As hackers get smarter, the need to protect your digital assets and network devices is even greater. While providing IT security can be expensive, a significant breach costs an organization far more. Large breaches can jeopardize the health of a small business. During or after an incident, IT security teams can follow an incident response plan as a risk management tool to gain control of the situation. 

Although IT security and information security sound similar, they do refer to different types of security. Information security refers to the processes and tools designed to protect sensitive business information from invasion, whereas IT security refers to securing digital data, through computer network security.

Threats to IT security can come in different forms. A common threat is malware, or malicious software, which may come in different variations to infect network devices, including:

  • Ransomware

  • Spyware

  • Viruses

These threats make it even more important to have reliable security practices in place. Learn more about malware to stay protected.

Types of IT security

Network security

Network security is used to prevent unauthorized or malicious users from getting inside your network. This ensures that usability, reliability, and integrity are uncompromised. This type of security is necessary to prevent a hacker from accessing data inside the network. It also prevents them from negatively affecting your users’ ability to access or use the network.

Network security has become increasingly challenging as businesses increase the number of endpoints and migrate services to public cloud.

Internet security

Internet security involves the protection of information that is sent and received in browsers, as well as network security involving web-based applications. These protections are designed to monitor incoming internet traffic for malware as well as unwanted traffic. This protection may come in the form of firewalls, antimalware, and antispyware.

Endpoint security

Endpoint security provides protection at the device level. Devices that may be secured by endpoint security include cell phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. Endpoint security will prevent your devices from accessing malicious networks that may be a threat to your organization. Advance malware protection and device management software are examples of endpoint security.

Cloud security

Applications, data, and identities are moving to the cloud, meaning users are connecting directly to the Internet and are not protected by the traditional security stack. Cloud security can help secure the usage of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and the public cloud.  A cloud-access security broker (CASB), secure Internet gateway (SIG), and cloud-based unified threat management (UTM) can be used for cloud security.

Application security

With application security, applications are specifically coded at the time of their creation to be as secure as possible, to help ensure they are not vulnerable to attacks. This added layer of security involves evaluating the code of an app and identifying the vulnerabilities that may exist within the software.

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