Protect your data by choosing the right personnel

General security

Security best practices include the use of a properly configured firewall, anti-virus protection, automated patching of operating systems, and security policies and procedures. Other areas to consider are intrusion detection and prevention measures, vulnerability assessments, and employee security training.

The scope of these particular methods is too large to be included in this brief article, but ample information about these practices exists on the Web. Look for the words "defense in depth" in your research.

Another important best practice is to set up servers that each perform only one service, and then lock those servers down, or "harden" them, against breaches. A Web server can be hardened so it can only serve Web pages, a database can be hardened to only perform database functions, and so on.

Mixing a Web server and a database server on one box could enable a hacker to breach your database server by hacking through the Web server's vulnerabilities.

An overlooked vulnerability