You are a network administrator for a small company.?

Question

The CEO takes a lot of work home, and has set up a home wireless network using 802.11g equipment. Some sensitive business information has recently been showing up in local news, and the CEO’s home network is the likely suspect. What steps would you follow to check the security of her home network? What steps would you recommend to improve that security?

Answer 1

First, you need to get permission from the CEO to check the security. After determining the security requirements of the company, I would then proceed to see how effective the present Security policy is in meeting those objectives. To do that, I probaly would install some intrusion Detection software to determine to what extent, if any the system had been compromised.
I would check the Security Logs to see what they showed, and to see if the hacker covered his/her tracks in logging in to the system.
I would determine:
1. If there were any malware present on the system.
2. I would determine the steps necessary to remove the malware, and determine what would be necessary to prevent security breaches in the future.
Most likely those steps would be the establishing of a Security policy, including password policy, lockout policy, addressing social engineering issues.
It would be necessary to go through those steps before a security plan could be developed or implemented.

Answer 2

The information on the disk should be encrypted in case the machine gets stolen or hacked. Her wifi connection should be encrypted and access should be restricted by mac address on top of that (if she could just use a hardwired connection that would be better). She should have a hardware firewall installed instead of whatever random wifi router/ap she probably has. If she's connecting to the office network she should be using a vpn.

Or maybe she should just stop bringing work home. It's healthier that way anyway.

Answer 3

Tell the CEO that I can solve his problem. I require a $10000 sign on bonus payable the day I start and $10000 per month salary plus a company car to consider a position like this.

Answer 4

Go to her home and check the setup. Make sure she is using WPA security, not WEP. Also make sure that she is connecting to the correct wireless router. Windows will connect to the router with the best signal, not always the correct one. And make sure that Windows won't connect to any other wireless router automatically.

Also double check her Internet connection security. Make sure her router is correctly configured, it may be worth it to get her a better router that has some better firewalling functions. And make sure to change it from the defaults. Run a security audit of her network similar to the company network.

Also double check ALL machines for viruses, spyware, other malicious programs, it may not be her network, or may be only part of it.

Answer 5

Shoot the CEO, and start doing my homework myself.