CMS Security Handbook: The Comprehensive Guide for WordPress®, Joomla!®, Drupal™, and Plone®

Reviewing Your Perimeter

If you have a single website or a full brick-and-mortar operation, reviewing and securing your digital and physical perimeters will keep you safe. Knowing where you're vulnerable (and to what it is vulnerable) is the first step in shoring up your defenses.

You can use a few common defenses, such as strong passwords, frequent change of passwords, virus protection, firewalls, and other devices. Brick-and-mortar businesses may face an even greater challenge in the wireless space. As part of your perimeter review, checking and disabling rogue wireless access points reduces the chances of unauthorized activity on those devices.

The following sections provide a good primer to get you started down the path of perimeter review.

Using Virus Protection

What is your current virus scanner? Is it set for automatic scanning and updates? Have you renewed the licenses? Can it be disabled without a password? These are just a few of the common issues surrounding virus scanners.

Depending on the configuration of the machine, scanning can take some time. This may lead to employees simply disabling it for now because they are busy. Locking down your virus scanners to run at specific times and removing the capability to easily disable it will keep your digital fence up.

Periodically review the machines to ensure that nothing is in the quarantine. Should you have a rash of infections, then the possibility exists that something sneaked in through a USB key or other media.

Banning ...