Network Security Auditing - Why would I need this?

1. Hackers know more about your vulnerabilities than you do - unless of course, you're a hacker yourself!
2. New vulnerabilities are discovered on a daily basis - What's safe today isn't necessarily safe tomorrow.
3. Inadaquate or misconfigured firewalls - Even if you have the best firewall in the business (See FireRack), it is very easy when configuring it, to leave youself exposed in unexpected ways. For example a firewall rule intended to allow internal users access to external FTP servers, could inadvertantly allow any external hacker access to your internal FTP servers, or worse, expose your entire network to the outside world. Have you penetration tested your firewall recently?
4. You don't know what software you're running - Usually servers, including those of Microsoft, Sun and Redhat, come supplied with software that you didn't ask for, don't need and you don't realise is there.

Traditional Solutions:

• Install the most expensive firewall there is and hope for the best - short sighted, a simple firewall without IDS or IPS won't protect you against todays popular attacks and doesn't properly address the above issues.
  
• Assign a staff member the job of keeping up with the hacking community. Subscribe to hackers newsgroups and BugTraq. - good idea for a medium to large businesses. If the staff member makes a good hacker, he can address points 1 and 2 above.
  The Ultimate Solution - Network Security Auditing