Server Security: Are You Confident Your Business's Critical Infrastructure Is Secure?

By any measure, 2017 has been a disaster for enterprise security. The industry lurched from devastating ransomware attacks to catastrophic data leaks. It’s no wonder consumer trust is at an all time low. Perhaps that’s not entirely fair: we never hear about the security success stories because they aren’t newsworthy. But there’s no denying that massive organizations with abundant resources have failed to protect their users' data.

Whether we blame misaligned incentives or a simple lack of care, it’s clear that any security slip will be ruthlessly exploited by criminals. As the saying goes, the criminals only have to get it right once; network and server administrators have to get it right every time.

Where does that leave smaller companies without dedicated security teams constantly at work to keep hackers and criminals at bay? A multinational corporation can take the hit, but the legal, financial, and brand ramifications of a data leak or extended downtime can do irreparable damage to small and medium enterprises — a group that includes thousands of Steadfast customers.

This is the problem we set out to solve with Sentinel, a new spin on managed security services that bundles together essential security services in one package. We introduced several Sentinel Managed Security bundles, including bundles for PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and Fisma, but I’d like to focus on our Core bundle in this article.

The Sentinel Core Managed Services bundle brings together a comprehensive suite of security tools and services. Our security professionals will implement the processes and systems that organizations need to keep their servers safe from online crime.

The Sentinel Core bundle takes a defense-in-depth approach to security, providing multiple layers of detection and security hardening. You can see a full list of the included managed security services here, but let’s take a closer look at a couple of the most important services.

Naturally, Sentinel includes a firewall, configured to maintain the integrity of your server. The firewall is your first line of defense against external attack. We also provide a Web Application Firewall (WAF) — a WAF operates at the level of applications like content management systems and eCommerce stores, monitoring incoming traffic and filtering malicious requests, including common attacks such as SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting attacks, session hijacking, and more.

But it’s not enough to protect the edge of the network, so we also include both vulnerability and malware scanning. Vulnerability scanning monitors installed software for known vulnerabilities. Malware scanning is capable of detecting any malicious software, including the precursors to ransomware, on your systems.

Additionally, Sentinel Core includes SSL protection and an IPsec Virtual Private Network. All data is encrypted as it moves over the internet, making it impossible for criminals to intercept or modify sensitive data.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, the bundle also includes disk encryption and key management services, identity and access management, email protection, and physical security.

The Sentinel Managed Services Core bundle provides a comprehensive modern security solution for IT infrastructure.