Introduction

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King s words ring true even in the case of your humble network. You can t start to defend your network if you don t know everything about it. Before you skip this chapter and say, Oh, come on of course I know everything about my network. I am the admin, the ruler of the CAT5; I am the One ( Matrix-like stunts aside), you might want to rethink that statement. Although most administrators can immediately tell you what type of network they run (a stable one, right?) and where their important servers are located, the less physical manifestations of their digital domain might escape them. From this, sincere ignorance as to the dangers that might lurk in their network develops quite easily. This chapter will answer what you need to secure, and we ll see the how to secure portions in other chapters.

To fully assess your network, you need to examine more than just the servers. Every path that a network packet could take should be reviewed and documented. Yes, the evil word: documentation. You ve spent most of your waking hours avoiding it, but now is the time to set aside an hour or two and get it done We re going to show you some methods in this chapter to make that chore a bit more bearable. After a few dozen pages, you ll have enviable documentation that will impress absolutely no one...