Fighting Phishing

CHAPTER 8Network and Server Defenses

Chapter 8 will cover technical anti-phishing defenses (software, hardware, and services) that can or should be deployed at the network level or server level in most organizations.

Creating a secure, trusted communications enclave where users and their devices can do their work is a requirement for good cybersecurity. Chapter 8 will cover many of the defenses necessary to secure a network against social engineering (where possible), phishing, and all cyberattacks. Many of these defenses should also be deployed on the server level and/or individual endpoint level (covered in Chapter 9, “Endpoint Defenses”) for a healthy defense-in-depth cyber defense plan. This chapter will cover super common network and server defenses as well as far less common ones.

Defining Network

For this chapter and book, what is a network? A network is any collection of communicating nodes. The simplest example of a network is two or more computers connected to each other using a common communication medium (e.g., wired or wireless). Networks can be very large, like the Internet or other global-sized networks. Networks can cover one or more cities (i.e., a metropolitan network). And networks can be small like inside your house or car.

Most of what this chapter discusses applies to organization-wide networks (e.g., local area networks, wide area networks, etc.), or perhaps even home networks to a smaller extent. This chapter does not apply to very short-distance networks ...